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Smile Cookie Campaign a huge success for Tim Hortons and AVFD

Two anonymous donations had local firefighters and staff busy making cookies
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Everyone was all smiles for the cheque presentation from Tim Hortons to the Ashcroft Volunteer Fire Department recently. The local Smile Cookie campaign raised $3,123 for the local fire department, which is going to use the money to help build a new fire training centre.

The Tim Hortons in the Ashcroft Travel Centre had a highly successful Smile Cookie campaign from Sept. 17-23.

Store manager Damian Couture says it went great.

“The community received it very well.

“Last year, we did OK, but this year, we completely blew it out of the water with the total and my expectations, too.”

Couture originally ordered 1,400 cookies, which would be $1,400 worth of sales. Last year, they sold $540 worth of cookies.

“I was expecting it to be better than last year, but not like this. Because I knew it was the Ashcroft Volunteer Fire Department [AVFD], I knew they would be heavily involved and there was definitely going to be an increase in sales.”

Couture was correct, there was a huge increase over last year’s total, which was the store’s first campaign.

This year’s total was $3,123, And he had order more than twice as many cookies.

“Last year’s cause was very good, but this year’s cause [AVFD] is very close to the whole community’s hearts. They are really trying to help everybody in the community.

“They’re trying to build a training centre and they have been trying to raise funds for it.”

Couture says he talked to Fire Chief Josh White about it and asked if he wanted to work on the program and raise some extra funds.

“Josh was up here almost every day and the firefighters really embraced it. Some of the members were having friendly competitions trying to outsell each other.”

He adds there was an anonymous donation, which went through one of the firefighters, of $500.

“So we did 500 cookies overnight when the store was closed. They picked up the order the next and [the cookies] were donated to the Food Bank.”

Couture notes the campaign is a lot of extra work for the staff, especially the bakers, but the whole staff embraced it.

“I was very impressed with the team and how they ended up doing twice the work. Just because it’s for a good cause, they were very enthusiastic about it.”

He says the Ashcroft Lions helped out a lot – not only at the store, but also by helping administratively by liaising between Tim Hortons and the fire department with the transfer of funds.

AVFD ecstatic

The AVFD chief says the campaign and the donation were “awesome.”

White notes they had somebody from the fire department at Tim Hortons almost every day.

“Every day, we tried to have somebody there for some time. I was even put to work; I had to ice a few cookies and it was fun.”

He adds there was a $500 donation one day and another $100 one the next day.

“It was a fever pitch. We were trying to ice as many as we could.”

The chief says all of the money is going to go toward a fire training centre for the department with construction starting either this fall or early next spring.

“It’s going to be up behind the public works yard and it will give us a place to do some smoke and ladder training.”

White says they want to get a 40-foot shipping container and put a 20-foot container on top of it. They want to put in stair wells and other things to make training a little more challenging.

“We don’t have anywhere in the Village where we can use ladders or step on roofs without damaging them.

“We need the centre so we can get a little more physical and aggressive with our training.

The chief adds he will be inviting our neighbouring fire departments – Cache Creek and Spences Bridge – to come out and use our facility.

“We want to give a huge thank-you to Tim Hortons and Damian for giving us the opportunity for the fundraising. We would like to thank the Ashcroft Lions as well.

“We had a lot of local support, so we want to thank everybody for helping us.”



editorial@accjournal.ca

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