A busy Cheshire charity which has seen a huge surge in demand at its community supermarket has just taken delivery of a donation of much-needed supplies from a new local storage business.

Lock Stock Self Storage opened its first storage park in Winsford this summer and its takeover of a local storage business provided further sites in Lostock, in Northwich, and Runcorn with plans for a fourth site in Crewe.

The company, based in Denbigh, has a policy of supporting charities, community groups and sports clubs in the areas where it operates across North and Mid Wales, Merseyside, Shropshire and Herefordshire and now Cheshire.

It has launched its community campaign in Winsford by handing over a consignment of food cupboard staples to Changing Lives Together which has been in the town since 2000.

The charity operates community food projects, The Very Green Grocery, in Winsford, and at The Old School House, in Northwich, and Lock Stock’s gift of canned and dried foods and sauces including rice, pasta, cooking sauces, baked beans, custard and tinned fruit will find a place on the shelves at both sites.

The Very Green Grocery provides a choice of low cost food options, much of it gifted, and for a £7 donation shoppers can walk away with a supply of goods worth considerably more.

Changing Lives Together’s Head of Development Rachel Waterman said: “CLT in one form or another has been operating in Winsford, Northwich and the surrounding areas for 25 years and we are delighted that we’ve just opened another shop in Crewe.

“We offer a range of services including our popular Very Green Grocery which helps around 450 customers a week at Winsford Community Hub, on Winsford High Street, and at The Old School House, on Manchester Road, in Northwich.

“The services we provide across the charity are wide and varied – for example our Buddy and Befriending Service supports around 380 lonely and socially isolated people with a weekly phone call or a meet-up group.

“The goods Lock Stock have provided are ideal for us – we really need those store cupboard staples with a long life so we can get a good variety of food into people’s homes.”

Richard Warner, Lock Stock Area Manager for Cheshire, said: “We now have four sites in Cheshire with about 800 storage units and most of those are already full and we do like to play our part in the communities where we operate.

“We’re delighted to be able to support Changing Lives Together which is a very active charity doing a great job of helping people in so many different ways.”

In addition to its grocery shops and its befriending service Changing Lives Together runs community hubs, finds new homes for pre-loved furniture and appliances, puts old bicycles back on the road with its ReCycles scheme, and operates community transport.

Its Head of Retail and Grocery, John O’Reilly, said: “We work with manufacturers, distributers and hauliers by taking food unwanted or excess food off their hands which they might otherwise have to send to landfill.

“We just took delivery of three pallets of pizzas which would have gone to waste and we’ve been able to distribute it although what we could do with for donations like that is a walk-in freezer.

“Lots of supermarket checkouts have baskets for donations and people often put in boxes of biscuits or chocolate but what we really need are beans, soup and other staples.

“Some of our customers are people who are financially sound but don’t like waste, others just need to make their food budgets go further but a big thank you to all of them because otherwise this food would go into landfill.”

Lock Stock, which now operates over 30 storage parks across North Wales and the border counties, is the largest container-based storage company in the UK.

The business, founded in Denbigh in 1999, has over 5,500 storage units providing over four million cubic feet of space at storage parks across North and Mid Wales, Cheshire and the border counties.

The company also specialise in the off-site hire of containers such which can be delivered by their specialist lorry. Sizes range from 10-feet long up through 20-footers to 40-foot units, all eight feet high and eight feet wide, from 640 to 2,560 in cubic feet in volume.

For more on the work of Changing Lives Together, go to https://www.changing-lives-together.org.uk/

For information about Lock Stock Self Storage, including off-site container hire, contact them on 01745 817178 or go to https://lockstock.biz/