Delivering the goods at North Finchley Community Store

Today, 15 June, Subham and I headed to St Barnabas Church in North Finchley to help out at the Community Store.

The store has a regular delivery on Monday mornings and needs a bit of GoodGym muscle to help get everything from the van into the shop and storage areas. Unfortunately, the delivery was delayed, so Subham had to leave before it arrived but thank you to him for coming along and being ready to help.

When the van did eventually turn up, there was plenty to shift, including fresh fruit, frozen goods and various other items. I worked with Kenny to transport everything into the store and down into the storage area.

Inside the shop, items are given a points value, which can change depending on stock levels, expiry dates and what needs moving on quickly. It’s a brilliant system: helping local people financially while also reducing food waste.

This is a regular Monday GoodGym Barnet session, so do look out for it and come along when you can. It’s practical, friendly, useful work and a great way to support the local community.

The weather may have been miserable, but everyone was certainly in high spirits! Including the Tesco deliverymen who had turned up (much to the surprise of Claire, the manager at the North Finchley Community Grocer) earlier than expected! And so, as soon as we arrived for our mission, we had the quickest of introductions and then it was straight on to helping bring the cage trolleys (which were filled with fresh fruit and veg as well as bread and cartons of oat milk) up the winding slope to the entrance.

Once all of the produce was inside, and the empty crates had been returned to the Tesco deliverymen, the volunteers quickly divvied out the goods for storage and sale and brought them to their respective locations. Once done, we dismantled the cage trolleys, ready to be stored.

Subham headed into the store to help out with restocking the shelves, while Jack headed down into the basement with Kenny, (who enthusiastically regaled him with story of when he wore a kilt in Thailand for his wedding!), to store the extra produce in the various store rooms and fridges!

As we said our thanks and goodbyes, the store was bustling with customers, which on a grey, rainy Monday, was wonderful to see!

Paul and I snuck down to the Community Grocery in North Finchley again this week. An unspecified shipment of goods were expected once again from the Felix Project and we were there to intercept and unload the merchandise.

Wearing our trusty Goodgym disguises, we hung around inconspicuously with Gus at the entrance pretending to be a dog therapy unit. Then the delivery van arrived and we hotfooted it up and down the ramp with cages and trolleys, unloading the shipment.

A parking attended briefly stopped to ask how long the trick would be sat in the electric charging space, but we kept our cool, didn't break our cover, and got the job done in record time.

An excellent way to start the week!

Three Goodgymmers laced up for a start-of-the-week mission at the North Finchley Community Grocery. Based at St Barnabus on North Finchley High Road, this relatively new (8-9 months old) project gets a delivery of food every Monday morning from the Felix Trust (via Volunteers on Wheels) and needs a hand running the trolleys up and down the ramp from the van to the grocery.

We're hoping this will be a regular weekly visit for us to help them out - but no session next week due to it being a bank holiday Monday.

Paul arrived early to do the welcoming, as he also had to leave early. Subham ran 3km (well, 2.99km according to his tracker) from Finchley Central while I had a slightly shorter 1.8km to get there. The delivery was a little later than expected, so we completed the manual handling training and a brief tour of the grocery, courtesy of one of the lovely volunteers.

Then the two of us ferried the trolleys and cages back and forth to the van, with the help of one of the excellent volunteers, Richard. We were done in record time, so we helped Richard unload some of the frozen and fridge food in the store. Then, all done, we jogged off with a spring in our steps for having started the week on such a good note.