Tesco has welcomed shoppers to its newest Express store in a south Essex village today.

The Doddinghurst Express opened its doors this afternoon (June 15) and is looking to help the community by supporting schools and children’s groups through Tesco’s newly launched Stronger Start grant scheme. 

The scheme provides grants for food and activities to support health and wellbeing. A £1,000 grant was unveiled at the opening for the Doddinghurst Wellbeing Community Hub.

The Brentwood village's store also has 17 new colleagues joining the team.

Echo: The grant is presentedThe grant is presented (Image: Tigerbond)

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Over the past five years, the supermarket’s customers across the East of England have helped to donate more than £12million to more than 6,000 community groups and good causes through its blue token voting scheme.

Tesco Doddinghurst store manager Louise Lambourne said: “We are extremely excited to be opening our new store and helping to serve the local community.

“We want to continue to offer great value to our customers with a wide product range and the benefits of Tesco Clubcard and Clubcard pricing to our customers.

“We have 17 new colleagues joining the team from the local area and we know that local knowledge and experience will be so important as we look to build connections and play our part in the community.”

Any schools which would benefit from Stronger Start grant funding are encouraged to apply online at www.tescocommunitygrants.org.uk.

Tesco's Community Food Connection scheme is also run in partnership with food redistribution charity FareShare. Each month more than one million meals are donated.