Panera locations collect soup for food drive

Eight Panera Bread bakery cafes in Rhode Island have collected monetary donations at their registers to deliver 45 cases of black bean soup to the 150,000-Pound Summer Food Drive Kick-off.
The drive is organized by the Rhode Island Community Food Bank in Providence, a Feeding America member food bank. The 45 cases are equivalent to 360 bags of the soup. Feeding America is a domestic hunger-relief agency.
Owned and operated by Panera Bread franchisee, the Howley Bread Group LTD. based in Cumberland, the eight stores are located in Cranston, East Greenwich, Lincoln, Newport, Providence, Smithfield, Wakefield and Warwick.
“The state is lucky to have generous local companies like Panera Bread/Howley Bread Group and its supplier, Sygma, who want to help families through these challenging summer months when they can’t receive assistance through the school lunch program,” said Andrew Schiff, CEO of the food bank.
Several companies, including Panera Bread, have donated a total of 50,000 pounds of food, beverages and paper products at the Summer Food Drive kick-off. That leaves about 100,000 pounds to be collected from the community, Schiff said.
The funding collected for the Panera soup donation is part of the cafes’ ongoing Panera Cares Community Breadbox Program. Panera Catering also helped the food bank launch the food drive by providing complimentary breakfast for the guests at the kick-off.

No posts to display