When shopkeeper Vimal Pandya uses the word ‘us’, he’s not talking about his family or even his staff. He’s referring to all the people in his local community of Rotherhithe in south London.
Halai General Stores, just a stone’s throw from the River Thames, has been owned and run by three generations of Vimal’s family.
“We are rooted in this area,” he says. His commitment to his local community is why he has been named one of two national Local Retail Champions by Allwyn – operator of The National Lottery.
Sharing the top honour with Barry Vara of Barry’s Local and Post Office in Chatham, Kent, Local Retail Champions celebrates National Lottery retailers doing incredible things in their local areas. Each winner will receive a prize of £15,000, following their customers’ nomination for their outstanding work.
Local Retail Champions has been made possible thanks to Allwyn’s Social Value Fund – an annual £1m that the company has committed to investing across different initiatives to help communities and high streets across the UK and Isle of Man to thrive.
“I feel humbled and honoured,” Vimal says of his win. “We are a small shop, making a difference, and it means a lot to be recognised nationally.”
Although it may be a small shop, Vimal and his family have made a significant impact.
Two years ago, they began running a community kitchen, serving free, freshly made hot food to local people. Now, they provide meals for over 500 people each week and also operate a food bank, open four days a week.
“In 2023, we started to see more and more people who were struggling and stressed about the cost-of-living crisis,” he says. “We were thinking about what we could do for them as a community shop.”
“We are Hindu and we believe in selfless acts. Helping others is in our hearts.”
The family reached out to the local Church of England primary school, St Peter’s, and arranged to use their kitchen every Sunday.
“We asked for their support so that we could cook for vulnerable families, people on low incomes, pensioners, anyone who needed support,” he says.
On the first Sunday, Vimal and his family, along with other volunteers, got out of bed at 6.30am to start work. For their first meal, they made a chicken jalfrezi with rice and a salad.
“It turned out delicious, even though we’d never cooked for that many people before,” he says.
Today, the community kitchen is busier than ever and run by a team of over 70 volunteers. It also distributes meals to community groups, tenants’ associations, and local faith groups.
For the first five months, the Pandya family paid for everything. As demand continued to grow, they realised they couldn’t continue like that indefinitely.
They registered their project as a not-for-profit organisation and secured a small amount of funding. Co-op, Tesco and Sainsbury’s all offered food donations.
The team also made contact with charities such as City Harvest, The Felix Project, and FareShare, which redistribute food from restaurants and suppliers that would otherwise be thrown away.
These additional resources enabled the Halai General Stores family to open a food bank in February 2024, serving around 400 families in the area throughout the week.
The food bank also distributes healthy food to nurseries, schools and other groups. And their work doesn’t just feed people; every month, they save around 50 tonnes of food from being thrown away.
Vimal is aware that some people might feel embarrassed about needing support from a food bank.
“We want everyone to feel relaxed and comfortable here,” he says. “Any of us could be in a position where we aren’t able to put food on our plates.”
The team also tries to support food bank customers in other ways. They invite organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureau, recruitment centres, and mental health support charities to join them, so that more help is available in one place.
No one involved with either the food bank or the community kitchen is paid, and the Pandya family continue to run their shop.
The £15,000 prize money will be used to purchase a van, enabling more food donations to be collected and more fresh meals to be delivered to people’s homes.
By creating a space where people can come together, not just to eat but to talk and to meet one another, Vimal has enabled the community to grow stronger.
“The people who were living next door to one another and maybe only saying hello, now they’re becoming close friends,” he says.
“They are going out for a walk, a drink, or meeting each other’s families. We are a very diverse borough, but I think we are creating a culture that shows no matter where you are from, we are all the same.”
By recognising and rewarding retailers through the Local Retail Champions initiative from its Social Value Fund, Allwyn is amplifying the incredible impact of The National Lottery on high streets and communities across the UK.
