Store for poor is a winner
Ten days after the first «social grocery store» opened in central Athens, the turnout has been much higher than expected with queues extending outside the supermarket and many of its shelves emptying. The grocery was opened by the Carrefour-Marino-poulos supermarket group in association with the City of Athens and the Foundation for the Homeless and caters exclusively to the poor and low-income earners. Families that earn less than 5,000 euros per year qualify to obtain free items at the supermarket based on an electronic rationing system that offers each customer up to 100 euros of free supermarket goods. «Out of the 200 families that are entitled (to the free goods), 150 have showed up,» Panagiotis Leontaris, manager of the grocery store, told Kathimerini. The store is open every Tuesday and Thursday for five hours each day and follows in the steps of corresponding stores set up in France, Belgium and Spain which have had similar grocery stores for the last few years.
