Comment by benj111
6 hours ago
No. They were paying full price, I specifically checked.
I mean the junkies could just use the money they didn't spend buying food to buy drugs. I'm not entirely sure this isn't just an extension of people feeling like they're doing a good thing rather than actually doing a good thing. And that's assuming a meaningful proportion of food bank users are actually junkies.
I'm not saying that food banks never pay full price for food-- I'm sure it happens some. But for the most part food banks pay way below market rate.
But, for example, if you make a >$100 donation to Second Harvest Food Bank (i.e. so that transactional costs are small), each 50 cents becomes a distributed meal. Note that they collect a few additional cents from the partner charity that is distributing the meal.
OTOH, the school I work at does a Thanksgiving meal drive where students buy food at retail and bring it in. It is definitely less efficient than giving funds somewhere like SHFB, but I think it's an important tangible experience especially for younger kids to give something they recognize as food to the less fortunate.