LITTLE CURRENT—Smiles shone bright and broad as members of Local Food Manitoulin and the Good Food Box program gathered with staff at the Tim Horton’s Little Current location to accept the donation of a record $8,200 from the local Tim Horton’s Smile Cookie Campaign.
“This is a record for our location,” confirmed store manager Chantelle Dubroy. “In fact, all of the locations across the province brought in a record amount this year.”
A record-breaking $22.6 million was raised through the sales of Smile Cookies this year, supporting over 600 charities and community groups across Canada and in the United States, noted a release from corporate headquarters. “We’re so grateful for the outpouring of support for this year’s Smile Cookie campaign from Tims guests across Canada,” said Tim Hortons president Axel Schwan. “Thanks to your incredible generosity we topped our previous Smile Cookie record. “A huge thanks to every single Tim Hortons restaurant owner, team member and volunteer who collectively helped to bake and hand-decorate millions and millions of cookies. Your dedication and enthusiasm represents the kind of deep care for our local communities that Canadians can rely on from Tim Hortons.”
“We had a really good set of volunteers this year,” said Local Food Manitoulin Chair Richard Lathwell. “They really rock. We were decorating faster than they could bake them—although the other thing I have to say, too, is that we volunteers do a very small part of the cookie production, the Tim Hortons people do most of the work, they do the unpacking and the baking and stacking, and the selling.”
The volunteers are responsible for putting the “smiles” on the Smile Cookies.
“We have to give a shout out to Little Current United Church,” said Good Food Box coordinator Margot Bickell. She noted the church provides the venue for putting the food boxes together to be distributed across the region. “We have to thank Lavish Your Independent Grocer for their support as well; they have been very generous to us.” She also noted the support of Gore Bay’s Dean’s Valumart and the Foodland in Mindemoya. The stores provide the food for the boxes at “near cost,” said Ms. Bickell.
Thanks to the donations from the Smile Cookie campaign and the contributions from users of the service, the Manitouilin Good Food Box program is self-sustaining and able to provide hundreds of boxes of good healthy food to families each year.
