If you were lucky enough to be at the recent Checkout Scotland music festival in Glasgow, I hope you agree with me when I say that helping raise money for charity shouldn’t be this much fun.
As a general rule, raising money for charity involves something deeply unpleasant like running a marathon or jumping off a bridge with a length of rubber attached to your leg the only thing between you and certain death.
So to rock up to a music festival, enjoy a few beers with around 550 industry colleagues and then listen to Peter Andre and Callum Beattie knocking out some banging tunes seems like one of the more pleasant ways to raise money.
I must declare a personal interest here as Checkout Scotland 2025 was the fourth running of the event, but it was the first year that I had the privilege of chairing the Checkout event committee. Thanks must also go to GroceryAid Scotland chair Matthew Howie who committed endless hours to helping deliver what was a massively successful event.
So I’m doubly chuffed that the event went so well and feedback from sponsors and attendees was uniformly and unequivocally positive. With your support, we raised more than £30,000 for GroceryAid Scotland and every penny will be spent supporting industry colleagues in Scotland.
Even more important than the cash, however, is the role that Checkout has played in transforming awareness of the charity and the free and confidential emotional, practical and financial support it can provide to colleagues in Scotland. The more people up here know that GroceryAid is there and can help, the better.
The number of people in Scotland requesting support has more than doubled in the last couple of years and that’s partly down to the sustained challenges we all face in this industry but it’s also down to the fact that colleagues needing help now know there is somewhere they can go.
And we achieved all of that by putting on a party, coming together and having a laugh. Doing good really shouldn’t be this much fun – but at Checkout, it is. So make sure you get involved next year, either by sponsoring or by buying a ticket. It’ll be the best £95 you ever spend.
Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR
Doing good shouldn’t be this much fun
If you were lucky enough to be at the recent Checkout Scotland music festival in Glasgow, I hope you agree with me when I say that helping raise money for charity shouldn’t be this much fun.
As a general rule, raising money for charity involves something deeply unpleasant like running a marathon or jumping off a bridge with a length of rubber attached to your leg the only thing between you and certain death.
So to rock up to a music festival, enjoy a few beers with around 550 industry colleagues and then listen to Peter Andre and Callum Beattie knocking out some banging tunes seems like one of the more pleasant ways to raise money.
I must declare a personal interest here as Checkout Scotland 2025 was the fourth running of the event, but it was the first year that I had the privilege of chairing the Checkout event committee. Thanks must also go to GroceryAid Scotland chair Matthew Howie who committed endless hours to helping deliver what was a massively successful event.
So I’m doubly chuffed that the event went so well and feedback from sponsors and attendees was uniformly and unequivocally positive. With your support, we raised more than £30,000 for GroceryAid Scotland and every penny will be spent supporting industry colleagues in Scotland.
Even more important than the cash, however, is the role that Checkout has played in transforming awareness of the charity and the free and confidential emotional, practical and financial support it can provide to colleagues in Scotland. The more people up here know that GroceryAid is there and can help, the better.
The number of people in Scotland requesting support has more than doubled in the last couple of years and that’s partly down to the sustained challenges we all face in this industry but it’s also down to the fact that colleagues needing help now know there is somewhere they can go.
And we achieved all of that by putting on a party, coming together and having a laugh. Doing good really shouldn’t be this much fun – but at Checkout, it is. So make sure you get involved next year, either by sponsoring or by buying a ticket. It’ll be the best £95 you ever spend.
Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR
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