Western Grocer Serving the industry since 1916
Save-On Foods is bullish about this year’s Make Happy Tummies Campaign
By Robin Brunet
One thing Save-On Foods president Jamie Nelson enjoys as much as being a grocer is helping to feed school kids.
Specifically, he and his colleagues roll up their sleeves annually to make breakfast for children at local schools, as part of a fundraising campaign for the national Make Happy Tummies program. “Watching kids enjoy their meals is a wonderful experience,” he says. “Plus, it’s fulfilling that our grocer competitors and those of our suppliers come together for this cause.”
Make Happy Tummies (formerly Toonies for Tummies) helps Canadian children start each school day nourished, confident, and ready to learn. It is an initiative of The Grocery Foundation, founded in 1979 as a registered non-profit organization supporting other organizations that provide healthy food to school-age children in need.
Fundraising is crucial to the Foundation’s success and takes place through its annual Make Happy Tummies Gala, an in-store fundraising platform (which runs from the third week of January until the second week of April, in over 1,700 stores nationally), and a voucher program that offers significant savings to student nutrition programs. “One hundred percent of all funds raised supports student nutrition programs in the communities where the donations were made,” says Grocery Foundation executive director Simon Small.
Save-On’s participation has, over the past seven years, become a vigorous and even festive undertaking. “We build displays and store teams dress up, and this generates excitement in all 195 Save-Ons across the West as well as in some of our other banners,” Nelson says.
Save-On was responsible for a quarter of a million of the 2.5 million meals delivered by Make Happy Tummies last year, a remarkable achievement considering shoppers are having an increasingly difficult time making ends meet, and the grocery industry overall is facing numerous challenges.
Small says, “Unfortunately, the cause of feeding schoolkids in need is more important than ever. When we launched our inaugural rebranded campaign last year – which raised over $4.4 million – the national statistic was that one in five schoolkids showed up to school hungry. Today, that has increased to one in three. Kids and young families are disproportionately impacted by the affordability crisis we’re all trying to cope with.”
Nelson adds, “Yet, we’ve been able to deliver growth year after year, specifically in Western Canada. It’s humbling, because that means our customers trust us to be part of the solution.”
While the January to April fundraising window is all-important to the Foundation, for Nelson the importance of the cause really hits home when Save-On participates in the campaign’s hallmark Make Happy Tummies breakfast events, where sponsors and the grocery community prepare breakfasts in local schools across the Western provinces.
“Getting together and making breakfast for a bunch of young kids as they come running in is not only exciting, it also puts a lot of things into perspective,” Nelson says, adding that he and his team visit schools in the Greater Vancouver region. “The kids are happy, they’re in a safe environment, and the experience is heart-warming and very infectious. It makes us doubly motivated to continue raising funds and improving on our success.”
Capping this year’s campaign will be the Make Happy Tummies Gala on January 30, 2027, an event that will bring together over 3,000 industry players – and by which time the Foundation and Save-On will already be heavily focused on organizing a new season of fundraising.
Nelson concludes, “I would urge retailers and suppliers who aren’t yet involved in Make Happy Tummies to get involved. It’s an urgent cause, but the spirit of collaboration is incredible, and together we’re making a difference.”
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