Beth Ferry, Patty Dohm and Rennie Town from the MSU Extension race through the store in search for designated grocery items. MSU Extension won the People’s Choice award for best cart design.

The “Green Machine” from Cass County Courts outswept their competition last week to emerge as the winning team in Midwest Energy Cooperative’s 2nd Annual Supermarket Sweep Food Drive.

The event was held at Martin’s Supermarket on Sanford School Road in Elkhart.

Supermarket Sweep is a spirited and competitive “food-raiser” benefiting the food pantry programs of Helping Hands.

The event pits team against team for a five minute sweep of the supermarket to gather grocery items for local food pantries.

The team collecting the most items on the provided shopping list wins.

The team from the Cass County Counts used a recycling theme for their cart design.

Second place honors went to WAOR and the MSU Extension won the People’s Choice Award for the best decorated cart.

In total, 12 teams participated, generating $750 in cash and $1,000 in groceries for Helping Hands.

“This is really a fun and innovative twist of traditional food drives,”  said Nicole Barfell, event organizer.

“Helping Hands is doing really important work in the community, and Midwest Energy is honored to support that through this event. I really appreciate the spirit and creativity of all of our teams, and their willingness to spend a couple of hours of their time to make a huge difference in the lives of local families.”

Midwest Energy Cooperative is a member-owned electric utility providing electric distribution and an assortment of energy-related programs and services to more than 35,000 customers in 11 counties in southern Michigan and northern Indiana and Ohio.