LOW-cost and free food Midland supermarket Dreambuilders Care is celebrating one year of its community-funded op shop.

Dreambuilders Care chief executive officer Ursula Dixon said the op shop was first opened to generate more revenue for the adjacent supermarket.

“Everything we sell in the op shop comes back into the supermarket and community meals to serve that part of our community that’s really struggling to put food on the table,” she said.

“The op shop is like a traditional old-school op shop with everything from electric mowers to beautiful old-school cabinets to a piano.”

Ms Dixon said demand for discounted and free food has increased.

“Most people engage with us because they are struggling with food. Our community meal space is serving 78 guests four nights a week on average, and our breakfast is now seeing over 150 guests on Thursday mornings,” she said.

Ms Dixon also said the supermarket and op shop have an average of 85 visits daily, which can put pressure on the volunteers.

“Some of the challenges we have are really good challenges like the amount of donations we get – we don’t know where to put them all – so we’re stacking them on top of each other,” she said.

“But then there are gaps in our volunteer roster, which we need to have all the donations sorted. Typically, in this space, as much as we have the most amazing donations, we do get stuff that we simply can’t sell and getting them recycled takes time.”

Ms Dixon said seeing the community come together was a highlight.

“There’s so much goodness in people from donations to volunteering to purchasing things from us, sometimes because they need them, sometimes because they are trying to help us.”

Dreambuilders Care is currently applying for a grant.

“We have a grant application at the moment for a cold room, because we’re just coming into summer, and we need somewhere bigger to store fruit and veg, so that we can offer really good fruit and veg every day to our community without it going off,” Ms Dixon said.

“Food insecurity is our focus and everything we do is around serving that in our community, making sure that people can be confident to get some food when they need it. And so, seeing an increase in that, we’re hoping that we get this grant.”

People can get involved with Dreambuilders Care by visiting their website or by calling 0411 736 770.