Low income members of a community shop, set up in Yorkshire, are now able to purchase quality, branded goods at slashed prices, as part of a scheme piloted in the ex-mining community of Goldthorpe, near Barnsley.  The stock comes from major manufacturers and would have otherwise been thrown away due to problems such as labelling or distribution issues, despite the products being within date and fit for consumption.  If successful, it is expected that this scheme will be implemented in other areas of the country.  Those who purchase goods from the shop must be members, and members must be in receipt of means-tested benefits.

The scheme is not exclusively helping those who are on welfare support, but also manufacturers themselves.  Although certain products in the ‘social’ supermarket, as it has been named in the press, will be sold for as little as a few pence, the manufacturers will no longer be paying large amounts of money in landfill tax in order to dump mislabelled products.  Despite there only being a reported 2,400 products compared to a large supermarket of around 40,000, members are happy that spending less on their weekly shop allows them to use the remainder of their weekly allowance elsewhere, for example – the gas bill.

However, there there is also the opinion that this is encouraging people to stay on benefits, perhaps not so eloquently expressed by “social commentator” and professional controversialist Katie Hopkins who tweeted, “A social supermarket is lefties babying those on benefits that refuse to work and use their cash for Sky and smokes.” Low-income workers, who may also struggle to feed their families and pay their bills, who would greatly benefit from this kind of service, have been overlooked – unless there are plans to expand the membership demographic.

The most positive outcome is that food that could have been wasted has now been saved.  However, is it being dispersed wisely?