Tesco is getting ready to welcome customers to the opening of its new Express store in Barnes this Thursday.
The store at 149 Church Road, SW13 9HS will open its doors on 16 February, and in addition to providing 19 new jobs, it brings with it food bank donations and Tesco’s Community Grants funding opportunities for local good causes.
Steve Wilks, the store’s manager, said that supporting the community’s residents will be hugely important to store staff in the coming years.
She added: “We’re hugely excited to be opening our new Barnes Church Road Express to help support the community.
“The store opening will provide a real boost for Barnes, helping to employ and train local people, and it’ll be a pleasure to see our colleagues grow and develop.
“We are really looking forward to welcoming so much new talent and experience into our Tesco team.
“We will of course also promote Tesco’s Community Grants scheme, with the aim of donating thousands of pounds for local good causes that can help the community to flourish.”
“We are doing this while still offering the community our best service and broad range of products such as fresh food and food to go – and we look forward to welcoming our first customers.”
Community groups in and around Barnes are invited to apply for community funding through Community Grants, Tesco’s blue token voting scheme which sees three local projects voted on by customers in store every three months, with first place awarded £1,500, second place £1,000 and third place £500.
Local organisations can apply for grants at tescoplc.com/sustainability/communities/tesco-community-grants.
One of the other Tesco initiatives that will benefit Barnes groups is the Community Food Connection scheme, which is dedicated to redistributing surplus food to charities and community groups from every Tesco store at the end of each day.
Since its launch in 2015, the Tesco Community Food Connection Scheme has donated more than 134,500 meals to local charities in Richmond Park.
The Community Food Connection scheme is run in partnership with food redistribution charity FareShare. Each month more than one million meals’ worth of food are donated across the country.
