‘Tis the season for smiles — on cookies.
The Carman & District Christmas Cheer Board will be one of the benefactors of a new initiative by Tim Horton’s Restaurants.
For over 25 years, Tim Hortons has become synonymous with their annual Smile Cookie campaign. This year, they are expanding the program with their first-ever Holiday Smile Cookie campaign.
From Nov. 13 to 19, 100 percent of proceeds from each Holiday Smile Cookie sold will be donated to local charities and community groups.
Keeping with the theme of the holiday spirit, funds generated from the Holiday Smile Cookie Week will be split between the Tim Hortons Children’s Foundation and the Carman & District Christmas Cheer Board. The owners of the Carman Tim Hortons also own the Morden and Winkler locations, and have chosen to donate to each local cheer board from the Holiday Smile Cookie Week.
“With the current state of the economy and the timing — the holiday season — it just seemed fitting,” said owner, Jeff Doerksen. “The cheer board does such great work in each community so it felt like the right place to go.”
The Holiday Smile Cookie will be a tasty white chocolate chunk sugar cookie with red and green sprinkles baked into the dough. Each will be hand-decorated with a white smile and eyes and sold for $1.50 each.
The local location will be taking pre-orders for the cookies this week and will be selling them in-store next. Order forms can be picked up in-store or downloaded off the store’s social media pages. The Carman & District Christmas Cheer Board will also have forms to circulate to businesses and people wanting them and will post them for download on their social media channels as well.
“This is tremendous for us to have this kind of partnership with them,” said Deana Gauld, Carman & District Christmas Cheer Board chairperson.
Carman’s Tim Hortons has been a drop-off location for the cheer board toy and food donations in the past. The Carman Kinettes also raised funds to buy Tim Hortons gift cards for the hampers, keeping the cheer board’s relationship with the store strong.
Gauld said the cheer board will have a few volunteers help to decorate the cookies during Holiday Smile Cookie Week. Doerksen said their goal for the inaugural week is to sell 3,000 cookies at each location.
On Nov. 14, the Carman & District Christmas Cheer Board will be opening their phone lines to accept Christmas hamper requests. Each year, they bundle over 150 hampers for local families, and with the current economic state of the country, Gauld said the extra funds now coming from Tim Hortons will be a huge help.
“Having this partnership, whatever it looks like, is fantastic,” she said.
For those wanting to donate to the Carman & District Christmas Cheer Board, bins will be out soon for physical donations. Monetary donations can be mailed to Box 1555, Carman, MB, R0G 0J0 or by e-transferring carmanchristmas@gmail.com. In the message of e-transfers, people can add their address, and a receipt will be mailed to them.
