HARRISONBURG, Va. (ROCKTOWN NOW) – The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank ended this year’s ‘Shop to Stop Hunger’ event with more than $7,300 in donations and nearly 700 lbs. of food in their pantry. 
Altogether, the Supermarket Sweep-style event gathered enough groceries to make nearly 30,000 meals for the food bank’s community. According to BRAFB Director Millie Winstead, the event is about more than just the groceries collected to fight food insecurity in the region.
“It’s the hope,” Winstead said. “I think it’s such a great example of how our community can come together and inspire hope for our guests.”
Kroger sponsored and hosted the event at their store on East Market Street in Harrisonburg Thursday morning, donating all groceries collected from their shelves to the food bank. Three local celebrities participated loading as many items into their cart as they could in under 60 seconds.
Those contestants included Irina Dovganetskiy, who owns withSimplicity in downtown Harrisonburg; John Dull, a youth pastor at Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church; Renee Sprouse, a quality control specialist at the Hershey Chocolate plant in Stuart’s Draft; and Riley Reed, an on-air talent for Harrisonburg Radio Group’s Q101 FM and More 96.1 FM.
Dovganetskiy was the overall winner with the highest overall totals for money raised, pounds of food donated, and pounds of food collected while shopping Thursday. She took home BRAFB’s ‘Cart Away Hunger’ Award as the overall winner, along with the ‘Heavyweight’ Award for the most pounds of food collected and the ‘Hermes’ Award for the highest value cart.
Her strategy was to fill her cart with large containers of olive oil and other premium cooking oils.
“We got as much oil as we could in that cart, trying not to waste time between aisles – just stand there and get all the oil we could get,” Dovganetskiy said after the event.
Although cooking oil wouldn’t be one of the first items that would come to mind during a food drive, Winstead said it’s a staple that’s in high demand for kitchens partnered with BRAFB.
“We work with many partners too, partners who are doing soup kitchens, so they’re cooking on large levels,” Winstead said. “So a lot of those large jugs and everything may go to those.”
Contestants also raised money for BRAFB in the weeks leading up to the ‘Shop to Stop Hunger.’ Sprouse won the organization’s ‘Rainmaker’ Award for most funds raised, while Reed won the ‘Spirit’ Award for bringing out the most people to cheer on the contestants.
The total amount of food collected Thursday pushed BRAFB’s event over the 700,000 meals mark. After this year’s event, the food bank has collected 727,227 meals worth of groceries since the first ‘Shop to Stop Hunger’ in 2013.