Strack & Van Til recently put an exclamation point on an important campaign that ran during the month of April to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at all Strack & Van Til, Ultra Foods and Town and Country stores. Leaders from St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Miller Coors and Indiana Beverage met at the Highland based offices of Strack & Van Til to celebrate the win.
In partnership with Miller Coors, Indiana Beverage and the NWI Times, Strack & Van Til raised $50,096 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, surpassing the lofty goal of $40,000 and outperforming last year’s campaign totals in a big way.
The campaign was part of Strack & Van Til’s ongoing “Checkout Challenge” that allows shoppers the choice to donate right at checkout. Since August of 2015, the Checkout Challenge campaign has helped to raise nearly $500,000 for organizations that help those in need, 100% of which goes directly to the organizations themselves.
“We operate in the best communities in the country” said Chris Bengtson VP of Public Relations for Strack & Van Til. “It’s clear that our community is also a huge supporter of what St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital does. Without them, this simply would not have happened. We couldn’t be happier with the result and can’t thank our shoppers enough for all that they did to help these children and their families.”
About Strack and Van Til
Founded in 1960 Strack & Van Til is a grocery retailer focused on providing high-quality products in a unique and inviting atmosphere with a high level of customer service. The company currently operates 37 stores in Illinois and Indiana under the banner names Strack and Van Til, Ultra Foods and Town & Country Market. Strack and Van Til is an equal opportunity employer.
About St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
St. Jude is the realization of the commitment entertainer Danny Thomas made to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. By 1955 Danny and a group of Memphis businessmen he’d rallied to build the hospital decided it should be more than a general children’s hospital. At the time, the survival rate for childhood cancers was 20 percent, and for those with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) — the most common form of childhood cancer — only 4 percent of children would live. They believed that St. Jude could help these families with nowhere else to turn. St. Jude would become a unique research institution where the world’s best doctors and scientists would work together to cure childhood cancer, sickle cell and other deadly diseases.
The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Consistent with the vision of the founder Danny Thomas, no child is denied treatment based on race, religion or a family’s ability to pay. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food — because all a family should worry about is helping their child live. St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and from around the world. Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent since it opened more than 50 years ago.
