Struggling French food bank warns it will soon be turning needy people away

The French charity Les Restaurants du Cœur, which distributes tens of millions of meals each year, has warned it will have to turn hungry people away and reduce the produce it hands out, because of a lack of funds. The French government said it will step in to help.

Volunteers prepare food packages in Asnieres, northern Paris, for the launch of the Restos du coeur winter campaign in November 2022. © Bertrand Guay/AFP

Despite calls for donations over the past few weeks, Les Restaurants du Cœur (Restaurants of the Heart) will have to cut back in November, director-general Jean-Yves Troy told a parliamentary financial commission this week.

The charity, founded in 1984 by the comedian Coluche, will have to “turn away people for the first time in its history”, Troy warned.

The organisation was 35 million euros in the red in September, according to its president, Patrice Douret.

This was partly due to rising costs linked to inflation, but also to an increase in the number of people needing food aid: 200,000 more in the past year.

The charity will have provided some 170 million meals for 1.3 million people this year.

Government aid

Following ther news, France's government  has said it will not leave Les Restaurants du Cœur without a solution. Government spokesperson Olivier Véran told LCI on Thursday that the state was ready to revise subsidies.

The state had already promised 15 million euros to the charity at the beginning of September.

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Véran said the ultimate solution was to ensure that people did not require food aid in the first place, adding the government was working on initiatives such as increasing minimum social benefits and fuel aid.

Solidarity Minister Aurore Bergé, meanwhile, is working with the charity to make sure it can welcome as many people as possible in November and December, Véran added.

Food 11 percent more expensive

Between 2 million and 4 million people in France are thought to depend on some form of food aid, a number that has climbed with each crisis of the past 15 years – first the 2008 banking collapse, then Covid-19, now inflation.

Already at an all-time high by August 2022, prices for household food have soared by a further 11 percent in the past 12 months, according to French statistics office Insee.

Meanwhile inflation on consumer goods across the board stands at 4.8 percent year on year. 

"Often, when households find themselves on a very tight budget, food is one of – if not the – main variables for adjustment, and so that's where families are going to try and make savings," Benjamin Seze, journalist and author of a book on food precarity, told RFI. 

(with AFP)