A Social Grocery Store is Emerging in Karlovac

Following the successful practices of other cities in Croatia, Karlovac has embarked on the implementation of a social grocery store project.

In the space of its former self-service store, which has been provided for this project by the Bus Station, around 500 of the most socially vulnerable families registered with the Social Welfare Center of the City of Karlovac will be supplied with basic food items, in accordance with the quantities collected, for which the City already allocates 1.12 million kuna annually for food subsidies. 

Alongside the Bus Station, which has donated its infrastructurally equipped space, the Social Welfare Center and the Milosrđe association, the partner-holder for the City of Karlovac in the implementation of the project, following the example of other cities, will also be the City Red Cross Society of Karlovac. At this occasion, volunteers are also being called upon to collect donated food items from citizens sensitized to assist those in poverty, who are increasingly at risk of life-threatening situations. Mayor Damir Jelić welcomed this project, although he stated that he sincerely hopes it will be of a temporary nature and that social conditions will improve, eliminating the need for social kitchens, which have become a daily reality, as well as such social grocery stores. 

However, larger donors of food products are seen as the main source of supply for such social grocery stores, with addresses of food producers, from bakeries to family farms and craftsmen, especially large retail chains, being written in the recently sent calls for this type of socially responsible business. In fact, there are double appeals to traders: first, to participate as donors with food items that are nearing their expiration date, even though many of them are still completely health-hygienically correct and usable for human consumption, and the second request concerns allowing volunteers to collect voluntary contributions in the form of food products from customers in front of retail establishments, which, of course, meet the prescribed standards in terms of avoiding the collection of perishable and other products unsuitable for handling and preserving their health-hygienic correctness. 

The biggest problem and obstacle to greater involvement of retail chains in such projects, emphasizes Nikolina Pahanić, a professional associate for sports, associations, and technical culture of the City of Karlovac, is the obligation to pay VAT on any donated food products, which is a cost that traders do not want to have in their calculations. 

– VAT on donated food is an obligation for retail chains, and this is indeed an objective difficulty, so I hope that through initiatives with other cities we will manage to achieve at least some significantly lower VAT rate for such cases, if a complete exemption from VAT for donations for such programs cannot be obtained. It is absurd that in such a situation, surpluses of perfectly good food are still being thrown away. As far as I know, in some European countries, special penalties are imposed on wasted food, while food donated for such purposes is exempt from VAT. It is precisely the absurd domestic regulations that have led to the fact that in Croatia, food worth about four billion kuna is wasted annually. On a global level, about 30 to 50 percent of all produced food is also wasted or not put on the market because it does not meet certain purely commercial parameters, from size to color and sugar levels, while at the same time, someone dies of hunger every 3.6 seconds in the world, and as long as such absurdities exist, there will be more hunger. In this way, I am trying to fight at least for the survival of the most needy within our own frameworks, said Nikolina Pahanić. When this first social grocery store in Karlovac will become operational will only be known after receiving responses from potential donors.