The Coca-Cola Christmas Caravan visited Cornerstone Co-op on November 26 as part of its cross-country initiative which is scheduled to visit over 100 local communities. During this leg of the campaign, local employees from the Lloydminster Coca-Cola Canada Bottling Limited facility were on hand to help attendees have their picture taken with Santa and the Iconic festively decorated red Coca-Cola truck.
District Manager, Rebecca Myers for Coca-Cola Canada Bottling Limited Lloydminster said, “Each stop features our iconic red truck and the jolly man from the north. Our mission is to deliver optimism within local communities that we serve; we want to ignite joy, compassion and optimism, and real magic.”
Myers also noted that there’s a lot going on in the world today and said that it’s their hope is to revive a sense of belonging in communities.
“What we are doing is creating a photo opportunity for individuals and families. They can take their own photo or we can take a photo for them. Some people bring their pets with them or bring props to create excitement. Whether you celebrate the holiday or don’t celebrate any holidays at all, we just wanted to spread optimism this time of year,” commented Myers.
While the truck was located at Cornerstone Co-op attendees could also enjoy hot chocolate and candy canes provided by the store and the holiday music that was playing. The Coca-Cola Company also took the spreading of cheer a step further by bringing the truck to the Vermilion Valley Lodge, Continuing Care Centre, and Vermilion Health Centre for those who could not make it out.
“In Vermilion we went to the Lodge and we are going to the acute care. When we first went past the continuing care the residents were napping so we didn’t want to honk the horn and wake them up so we went back there on our way out at 4:30 p.m. The joy that came through was just amazing, the residents were so happy to see Santa and have the flashback to their childhood of seeing the red truck,” said Myers.
Myers also acknowledged that running the caravan across the country does produce carbon emissions and was excited to talk about how the company has committed to reducing its carbon footprint by purchasing carbon credits through Planetair which is an initiative of UNISFERA International.
“I would like to recognize our sustainability piece that is near and dear to our hearts, we know there are carbon emissions by running this caravan and we have committed to reducing our carbon footprint by 20 tonnes of CO2 which is double what we estimate will be produced by running this caravan. We are bringing the holidays, but also doing our best to do what is good for the planet. Planetair is a Canadian non-profit organization founded in 2002 and through Planetair we are supporting the Planetair Plus Canada Portfolio, which not only provided gold- standard certified products but also supports climate change through the Nature Conservancy of Canada Tonne effect,” explained Myers.
Mike Gaudet, Food Store Manager for Vermilion Cornerstone Co-op said he was pretty stoked when they received a call from Rebecca asking if they would like to have the holiday truck stop by their location.
“I received a call from Rebecca one day in early November and she said they were having the holiday truck and asked if we would like to be a pit stop and I said, yes, of course. We didn’t have a lot of advanced notice but we figured out how we could make this work. I was pretty stoked about it because the only time I have ever seen the truck was on the commercial,” commented Gaudet.