Cornwall Banger Rally Challenge, the team behind the Vienna or Bust banger rally challenge for 2025, will be hosting their annual Supermarket Sweep in the St Austell ASDA on the morning of Sunday, December 8.

The annual event will see the team donate over £700 of food and hold extra food collections in support of the St Austell Foodbank. The public can join the fun from 9.30am and the sweep kicks off at 9.45am.

Andy Payne, the manager of St Austell Foodbank, said: “The work that Cornwall Banger Rally Challenge do is simply amazing helping so many different charities and we were bowled over last year with the supermarket sweep which literally helped hundreds of local people in need as it helped donate a tonne of food. We could not simply exist without this kind of help.”

Over a tonne of food was delivered to St Austell foodbank last year 2
Last year’s five teams in fancy dress before the sweep begins (Submitted)

One of the organisers, Sarah Hart, explained: “We have increased from five to seven teams this year. Each team will be given £100 and a list of items that the foodbank needs.

“Participants are always in fancy dress and up for a laugh. In 15 minutes they must, with no running, get everything on the list, make it up to as close to £100 as possible and get to the checkout first.

“We’ll be singing and dancing, and just generally fooling around like only us ralliers know how to be. There will be some YMCA, maybe a conga and other silly stuff to just make people smile.”

Last year’s event saw five teams collect a whopping 5 trollies full of food, to the value of £550. Team members then stuck around for four hours after the sweep to collect additional donations from members of the public, which pushed the amount to over a tonne of food for the charity. 

Over a tonne of food was delivered to St Austell foodbank last year.
Over a tonne of food was delivered to St Austell foodbank last year (Picture: Cornwall Banger Rally Challenge)

Sarah continues: “We’ll all stay in Asda after the sweep, giving out cards to the general public who are going in and doing their shopping. We will ask if they could get any extra items in their trolley that is something off the list that the foodbank desperately needs before Christmas.

“Last year we raised the equivalent of 1.2 tonnes of food. We went over to the foodbank and took everything with us and saw how vital this is going to be for struggling families in St Austell and the surrounding areas over the Christmas period.

“We invite everyone to come down to ASDA on Sunday, December 8 from 9:30am and see another rally spectacular and join in our crazy antics.”

Recently, the team at the Cornwall Banger Rally Challenge announced that they had raised more than £55,500 for local and national charities after participating in Split or Bust back in September.