CARO News

CARO Staff Donate more than 1500 Food Items for Local Food Banks in Week-long Competition

Posted on October 31, 2016

If you have been following CARO’s social media lately (here) , you will have seen our special company initiative for the past few weeks: a high-stakes, company-wide food drive contest!

It all started when a few of CARO’s scientists came across an article in their local newspaper (here) about BC’s Lower Mainland Food Bank being in desperate need of donations.  Specifically, Vancouver’s Food Bank was seeing the lowest supply since its inception in 1982. As CARO is the leading Food Analysis Laboratory in Canada (learn more), it was only right that we step in to help out. Everyone should have access to safe, healthy food and the staff of CARO decided to take this opportunity to make a difference in our local communities.  So in the spirit of giving, CARO’s Richmond location issued a challenge to CARO’s other locations in Edmonton and Kelowna. The challenge was simple: 

 

In the spirit of healthy competition, we devised the contest to prevent locations with more employees from having an unfair advantage. The Richmond division is CARO’s largest with 51 staff members, followed by Kelowna with 21, and Edmonton with 7, so it was decided the winner would be based on a per capita tally.

Immediately there were hushed emails across CARO on a strategy to collect the most donations possible.

…then what happened?

CARO’s Richmond office decided to go one step further by creating a series of collection goals, where an upper management staff member would be pied in the face with each goal met.  CARO’s VP, Patrick Novak, was pied after 50 items, Division Manager Brent Coates was pied after 100 items, Technical Manager Stephen Varisco was pied at 150 items, Cecil Chiu, Chemistry Coordinator was pied after 200 items.  These initial goals were far exceeded within 24 hours. Our President and CEO Brent Mussato eventually succumbed to peer pressure from our management and sales teams, agreeing to be pied if the Richmond division reached 1000 items.

By the time the contest closed the following week, all pie-raising targets were surpassed! A party was thrown to celebrate and CARO’s management was pied! Watch the video here:

 

Meaning to employees

Our ultimate goal was to collect food for families and individuals who use the food bank’s services, especially at this time of year with the holiday season fast approaching.  As a whole, CARO was able to collect 1595 items to donate to our local food banks – this equates to a whopping 20 items collected per staff member.

Not only did this  event create fun competition between our staff, but it brought all of CARO’s team together for a great cause – to give back to our communities and those in need.  A big thanks to all CARO staff that made the initiative a real success.

Healthy Living!

Since adding food analysis to our scope, CARO has become the #1 Laboratory in Canada testing fruits, vegetables and honey for chemical residues (learn more here!). Food analysis is an important part of the testing that we do for public safety and healthy living and we were thrilled to be able to give back to our communities by donating this precious source of energy. Contact us today or visit our online store for food reside analysis – we would love to hear from you.

Post written by CARO Employees Jennifer Morse, Trace Organics Analyst, and Kathleen Fyffe, Quality Assurance Specialist.