COVID-19 RESPONSE – FEEDING THE NATION
Family is at the heart of the Warburtons business and we have been working harder than ever to bake and deliver bread to your families every single day during this difficult time.
We wanted to share some of the ways we have been helping meet the needs of families up and down the country whilst keeping our people safe. If you have any questions, you can contact us by clicking here.
Supporting our communities
Supporting communities is something close to our hearts and is perhaps more important now than it has ever been. Through our Families Matter community programme, we have helped people and organisations across the country in a number of ways;
PRODUCT DONATION
We’ve worked incredibly hard to get as much product to those who need it the most and our teams across the country have distributed more than 20,000 products per week to a range of organisations.
We worked in partnership with national charity FareShare and with smaller local foodbanks and to local charities and pop up community food redistribution groups. We have also delivered products directly to hospitals and care homes to support our frontline workers, and to schools caring for key worker children.
FINANCIAL GIVING
We have donated an additional £190k to over 220 small community groups across the country to help them to keep doing their vital work during this difficult time
We’ve also donated £120k to three larger charities Age UK, St John’s Ambulance and Home Start to support them in continuing to care and provide essential services to those that need it the most
The Grocery industry has been working hard to feed the nation and to support our colleagues in the industry we have donated over £100k to GroceryAid
THE FUTURE
We won’t stop there, through our community programme Families Matters, our community teams across the country continue to look at ways we can help and work together with our charity partners to support those affected by the pandemic.
For more information on our financial grants and product donations, click here.
SUPPORTING OUR CHARITY PARTNER
We have been working in partnership with CRUK for four years to fundraise within the business and support the vital work they do in the fight against cancer. This year we are very proud to have reached the £2m mark. However, we recognise they are experiencing a shortfall in funding due to the crisis so we have offered an additional £50,000 to help them continue their great work.
PROTECTING OUR PEOPLE
We are incredibly proud of our colleagues and would like to thank them for working tirelessly in baking and delivering bread. They have embodied the Warburtons family values and their tremendous efforts have meant we have been able to deliver fresh bread to stores every day.
The health and safety of our people is always our number one priority. To ensure everyone is as protected as possible during this time, we are following the relevant government guidelines related to COVID-19 and have put in place additional safety measures across the business and adapted how we work.
We have undertaken risk assessments across all our sites and made sure we have considered and implemented the best ways to keep our people safe. That has included social distancing, minimising people on site and, of course getting those that can, to work from home. Where 2 metre social distancing isn’t possible, we have implemented different techniques such as the use of screens or changed how we work. Hygiene has always been an incredibly important part of our daily routines at site, but to minimise risk further we have increased cleaning, hand washing and all hygiene procedures across all our sites.
We have engaged our people throughout, providing training and communication and opportunities to feedback and comment on the practices we have implemented.
On top of this, we have also worked hard to ensure we consider the well-being of our people and have worked with our partners to offer support throughout to all our people including mental health support, financial health and physical fitness via our remote physio.
If you are a customer or supplier thinking about visiting us please get in touch with your usual Warburtons contact who will advise you whether or not you can visit the site, or if the meeting should be conducted remotely.
Should you wish to see a copy of any particular risk assessment because you will be attending one of our sites, you can also contact centrehse@warburtons.co.uk
Whilst none of us know quite what the future holds or what our new normal will look like, we are certain that will continue to protect our people, support our communities and work tirelessly to feed the nation.
Best wishes,
Jonathan Warburton
