Free Gifts

While I was off sick Wendy wrote our weekly blog on ‘Marmite’. It may seem an odd subject to write a blog on but ‘Marmite’ features large in our Centre. The bottom line is that the clients love it and use an awful lot of it!Anyway last week we received a phone call from a PR firm who work for Marmite and there is some digital agency that picks up when a brand name is used on the internet and reports back to the company. I spoke to a lovely lady who said they had read our blog and they would like to send us some free ‘Marmite’. We received a box today, full of jars of ‘Marmite’ and we are so grateful for this generous gift. We are a Charity and have a constant struggle to find funds to run Ben’s Centre so this gift is doubly appreciated; and also made us feel that our clients, who don’t get a lot of public support or awareness, are valued. Our Centre offers free food. This entails clients having a simple breakfast of toast with ‘Marmite’ and jam. Alongside this we have fresh fruit available and yoghurt to make smoothies and then coffee and tea. At lunch-time we serve a hot nutritious dinner. Most of us know that food prices have really escalated in the last months and again it has become more of a struggle for our Centre to provide this. We do provide it and this is in part to Wendy, our manager, being a very skilled shopper. We probably spend about £20 per day on average, which is amazing when you see what the standard is of the food produced. Wendy shops once a week at Morrisons and manages to keep within our budget and yet provide a healthy variety of food. She was a little annoyed this morning when she was only allowed to buy six Easter Eggs when we needed four times as many but no doubt Wendy will get round this in some way and our clients will receive their eggs when we have our Easter meal on Thursday. We will be closed from Good Friday and re-open on Monday April 20th, our blog will re-start then.