A local grocery store and church are making $20 donations go a long way.
The Fareway in Bettendorf and the First Baptist Church of Bettendorf are using the money to feed families.
People at the local grocery store can purchase a $20 pre-made bag of groceries. That will go to the church – that is passing out the items at their weekly food bank.
This started locally about two weeks ago.
“A jar of spaghetti sauce, peanut butter, saltines,” said Josh Bard, Fareway assistant manager.
That’s just some of the items in one of the bags.
“While people are just buying their groceries at Fareway, they can purchase one of these bags for families in need and then we see to it that it goes to those families,” said John Filbeck with the First Baptist Church of Bettendorf.
“It’s kind of just a good will gesture,” Bard said. “Makes us feel good, customers feel good about it so it’s a win win for everybody.”
Some people need this food more than ever.
“There seems to be more and more people that are in need as time is going on so we’re seeing the numbers increase gradually,” Filbeck said.
Within the first two weeks, almost 100 bags were purchased.
“It feels good to help people it really does,” Bard said. “We weren’t really sure about this with everything going on so at the end of the day, we sell 30 or 40 of these bags every couple days, it feels great.”
Shoppers paying it forward at Fareway isn’t stopped anytime soon.
“I don’t think people are going to stop buying so this week’s gone pretty good again so hopefully we can send another 100 out next Wednesday again when they come back.”
Filbeck
“This is the Quad Cities. We don’t just cut people loose when times get tough. We support each other, we love each other and this is one way that we can actually share God’s love in a practical way.”
The church will pick up the next round of donations from Fareway a week from Wednesday.
