Holiday hampers get boost from Smile Cookie donation

By Lethbridge Herald on December 11, 2025.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald

The Interfaith Food Bank has received a significant donation from the Holiday Smile Cookie Campaign proceeds just in time to help with their Christmas food hampers. 

With an original goal of $40,000 the campaign raised just over $47,000 which translates into over $23,000 for the Interfaith Food Bank as the proceeds are split evenly with the Tim Hortons Foundation Camps. 

Danielle McIntyre, executive director of the Interfaith Food Bank said this monetary infusion could not come at a better time. 

“We had a blast participating with this campaign and we felt so welcome at all of the stores by all of the store owners,” said McIntyre. “It was a wonderful experience that is going to do a lot of good for people right here in Lethbridge.” 

She said that even though they are receiving $23,594 from the campaign, the funds will be spent quite quickly, as they are serving over a 1,000 households per month, but it helps a lot. 

“Every dollar that is donated, is a dollar that we don’t have to take out of our own, so we will make sure that a lot of hungry families will have a very full Christmas hamper this year,” said McIntyre. 

Dave Lowler, a Tim Hortons franchisee owner in Lethbridge said it was great to be able to make such donation to the Interfaith Food Bank thanks to the collaboration of the community by purchasing the holiday smile cookies and the IFFB volunteers. 

“Over $47,000 in cookies and it’s a lot of cookies for the stores to produce and there is no way we could decorate that many without extra hands and having the volunteers jump in was very helpful,” said Lowler. 

He said the weather was in their favour as well compared to last year and that helped their sales increase by 25 per cent and added that they will be setting even higher goals for next year’s campaign. 

McIntyre said in addition to the recent infusion of money, they are still accepting any food donations residents would like to make. 

“At this time of the year, we are looking for the special Christmas items, like turkey, ham, chicken, cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing,” said McIntyre. “Along with the regular items for our regular food hampers like pasta, cereal, pasta sauce, peanut butter.”