Harry’s Rainbow Sausage Sizzle At Bunnings DIY Warehouse

Angela connected the E-Club with the Harry’s Rainbow charity.  It was an opportunity to provide service above self and cost time and no money.  This charity supports children and families whose siblings have died and help them cope with their bereavement.  They do this through various activities, outings and one to one counselling.  Obviously to be able to do this they need money and donations from whatever source (legitimate of course) to enable them to provide this vital service.

An opportunity was given to Harry’s Rainbow to have a “Sausage Sizzle” outside the new Bunnings DIY Warehouse in Winter Hill, Milton Keynes where Homebase used to be.  So how did this come about?

Bunnings is an Australian company and in Australia they have every weekend a charity doing a sausage sizzle near the front door of the shop.  It is a different charity each day and has become a bit of a tradition.  That tradition has been brought to the UK and Harry’s Rainbow was given the opportunity to raise funds on only their second weekend of opening.

It is a well organised event.  Bunnings provides the gazebo, BBQ and gas.  The charity provides the food and drink and sells it.  Just one slight catch here.  Bunnings dictates the bread and sausages and where to buy it from.  They also dictate the prices, £1.50 for the sausage sarnie and £1.00 for the cans of drinks.  Ice for the drinks has to be provided by the selling charity and Bunnings provides the containers in which to put the ice and drinks.

So, I turned up in my E-Club shirt at 10:50am and was immediately given a Harry’s Rainbow shirt to change into and also a very fetching blue apron. There were five of us on the stall; a chef, a bread lady, a cash lady, one serving the sarnies and me on the drinks.  Probably a bit over-manned but it was all good fun.

The place was heaving, people were queueing to get in the carpark, there was a free helter skelter, free ice cream but the customers had to pay for the sausage sarnies.  Onions were optional and were at no extra charge.  The adults tended to have the onions with the kids abstaining.  The veggie option was an onion sarnie and believe it or not I did see one person having that.  It wasn’t a 100% true veggie option though as the onions were cooked on the same platter as the sausages.

Lunchtime was the busiest for us and only one person quibbled about the price of the drinks with me.  The cans had 39p printed on them and we were selling them for a £1.00, I did point out that the profit was for a charity but that didn’t seem to wash (note to club – if we do it we need to try and get drinks without prices printed on the cans).

Bunnings provided vouchers for their staff to get some food which Bunnings duly reimbursed the charity.

Peter and Annette arrived just before 2:00pm and got their t-shirts to change into.  Peter wanted to do the cooking but John the chef was on a roll so he had to be the money man – appropriate I guess as the outgoing treasurer.

The atmosphere was great; everyone was smiling and some people who had been to Australia said “this is great, just like Aus”.  Nearly everyone I saw seemed to have purchased something from the store.  I spoke to a few of the customers and said “I bet you only went in to look around” and they had.

Definitely something we should do.  Not much effort to raise a few hundred pounds other than the purchase of the food and drink and then selling it.  We can also have table in the foyer of the shop advertising ourselves.