For weeks, customers at Piggly Wiggly in Brewton have been offering a helping hand to families in need with a simple donation at the grocery store.

Five dollars purchases a food bag which is donated to the food bank at First United Methodist Church.

Piggly Wiggly manager Peggy Booker said customers can still purchase the bags through Christmas through the store’s Family to Family program. Donations can be made at the store.

“This is something we have done for the past several years,” she said. “This is one way to give back to the community.”

Food bank volunteer Jim Bilder said community donations like the food bags from Piggly Wiggly are what help keep the food bank going. The church houses the food bank, but it serves the entire community, he said.

“We’ve seen a steady increase” in the need in the community, he said.

In 2007, the food bank changed its distribution rules, but every year since there has been an increase in the number of bags distributed, from 1,059 that year to 1,333 so far in 2010.

There were 1,281 bags distributed last year. Bilder said

Each bag distributed by the food bank contains canned spaghetti sauce, spaghetti noodles, Vienna sausage, Jiffy cornmeal muffin mix, boxed mac and cheese, grits, bag of Great Northern Beans, white rice, peanut butter, canned pork and beans, canned soup, canned tomatoes, canned vegetables and saltine crackers. Each bag recipient also gets a voucher of $10 to buy perishable items.