London's Business Cares Food Drive wraps up after successful weekend

The annual Business Cares Food Drive (BCFD) wrapped up Sunday after two days with hundreds of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of pounds of donated food.

“This weekend is about the volunteers,” said Wayne Dunn, chair of the BCFD.

“Not having the volunteers out would really hurt us a lot because they are out at every store, 38 of them in the London area, and they've come out in droves. The other part of this is the people coming out to donate, and it’s so heartwarming.”

After the kickoff Thursday, Friday was spent preparing for grocery store weekend.

“Saturday afternoon despite the cold outside, our results in the afternoon were amazing,” said Dunn. “It was a little slower on Sunday morning, but Sunday afternoon was excellent.”

It’s now time to count the food and donated cash. The BCFD will announce all the details at an event on December 19.

This year’s event was important, as the need is as great as ever.

Chair of the Business Cares Food Drive Wayne Dunn holds donated food outside the No Frills at Hamilton Rd. and Highbury Ave on Sunday Dec. 1, 2024 (Brent Lale/CTV News London)

“It’s why we continue to do it,” said Dunn. “Starting this 25 years ago, we're now probably ten times the size of what we were back then, and the need is ten times as much. We support 40 other social agencies and food programs and now that total is up to 70.”

The Bell media team was volunteering at the Food Basics at Wonderland and Commissioners. This weekend reporters Nick Paparella, Reta Ismail and Sean Irvine were among the volunteers as weather anchor Julie Atchison acted as store Captain.

Stores across the city were collecting and doing an excellent job convincing shoppers to fill a bag to donate.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of food was donated to the Business Cares Food Drive over the two days at 38 London, Ont. grocery stores (Brent Lale/CTV News London)

“When you start to multiply this over 38 stores over the city and that's what you see,” said Dunn. “That’s what gives us the shot (photo) in the warehouse of the amount of food, with all of these gaylords being full.”

“Whether it's a small store, large or medium one, they're all doing an incredible job and I’m pretty pumped about it.”