Belgian supermarket chain Colruyt is starting the sale of emergency food packs designed to enable people to be self-sufficient for 24 hours!
The emergency packs – which the company itself refers to as ‘basic packs’ – will be available from Tuesday on the shelves of around 80 Colruyt stores up and down the nation. The company says this move is in response to customer demand and government advice.
The basic pack contains food, tissues, a spoon and equipment for heating up food. “The pack is similar to the emergency pack previously launched by the Red Cross. They focus mainly on first aid, whilst we focus on food,” explains a spokeswoman.
The pack contains 3,100 calories in the form of muesli, energy bars, nuts, two meals, isotonic drink powder, coffee sticks, chewing gum, tissues, a spoon and a pouch for reheating food.
What’s included in the ‘basic pack’?
Breakfast: chocolate granola muesli
2 meals (kebab stew and BBQ pasta – both vegetarian)
3 energy bars (cookies & cream, raspberry/strawberry and coconut)
cashew nuts
isotonic drink powder in two flavours
3 coffee sticks
6 pieces of chewing gum
tissues
a spoon
a pouch to heat up the food
No freebie
The aim of this kit is for people to be self-sufficient for 24 hours. "There are circumstances when it proves useful to be able to carry on completely independently – think of the floods in Wallonia in the summer of 2021 or, more recently, the two-week gas outage in Mons (Hainault - Wallonia). But also power cuts that last longer than anticipated or occur at an inconvenient time. As a Belgian retailer, we want to meet our customers’ needs, which is why we are launching the basic kit today,” explains Colruyt’s Geert Elen.
This is a trial. If demand is high, the company is considering making the kits available in all stores. One pack costs €29.99.