School Breakfast Program

Our partners going above and beyond to help student nutrition programs

It’s an ironic reality: the school programs that provide nutritious meals for children are going hungry themselves. Many programs lack the funds to provide meals for the growing number of students, to serve healthy menu items or to operate every day during the school year. One of the best ways our industry can help funding-strapped student nutrition programs is by offering healthy food for less than they’d pay to purchase these items themselves.

With the generous cooperation of many of our retailer and manufacturer partners, our School Breakfast Program helps student nutrition programs purchase healthy food for children at reduced costs. A number of Grocery Foundation retailers as well as food, beverage and consumer goods companies all agree to forgo any profit they’d make and as such, offer products to these programs at a significant discount.

The result? The School Breakfast Program has delivered $5M in savings to student nutrition programs. That figure represents an additional 2.5M healthy meals provided to kids across Canada!

Finding novel ways to stretch every penny is a daily reality for those community members and volunteers trying to ensure that no child starts the day without a healthy breakfast. We absolutely rely on The Grocery Foundation and its partners to help! In 2019, with their support, local student nutrition programs were able to serve 100,000 more healthy breakfasts to children in Toronto alone. The impact of The Grocery Foundations work is huge!

Catherine Parsonage Chair, Student Nutrition Ontario and President of the Toronto Foundation for Student Success.

Special Thanks

Thank you to Purolator for delivering vouchers to schools.

Participating Retailers & Companies

Questions About Vouchers? Contact Us

 

Help Us Make Breakfast a Reality for a Hungry Child

Chasing dreams should be part of every child’s day. Going without breakfast shouldn’t be.

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We are so grateful to Canadians who support Toonies for Tummies during our annual store campaign and, year-round, online.

You may know on April 16th, the Federal Government confirmed plans to support student nutrition programs. Specifically, the budget has announced the creation of a National School Food Program, which will provide $1 billion over five years to Employment and Social Development Canada, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, and Indigenous Services Canada, starting in 2024‑25.

You may wonder what does this government funding mean specific to the need and our efforts to fundraise?

Without a doubt, we continue to need your support. While many student nutrition program leaders are encouraged by the incremental government support, many have taken to the news and social media to confirm even with this support, funding gaps will persist.

The Grocery Foundation's Vision, that no Canadian child goes to school hungry, remains fully intact. Our work continues and remains vital to support hungry children through their school’s student nutrition program. There is no change whatsoever in our focus, our mission, or our reliance on your support.

The programs we help fund are universal in nature. That means all children who require a healthy meal have access. Those on the front lines of these programs affirm their positive impact and positive halo beyond the day’s nutrition, from attendance, behaviours to the school community and mental health. The programs you help fund also support foundational nutrition knowledge and social skill building, as many programs include mechanisms for student involvement in menu planning, food preparation and serving of food to peers.

Thank you for choosing to support hungry children in your community, nourishing their health, well-being, academic success while fostering their school community. With your continued support, we will continue to help dreams take flight and nourish over 3,000 programs and neighbourhoods, yours among them.