Cook-19
We provided more than 50,000 cooked meals to NHS Key Workers.
Cook-19
From the moment it became apparent our kitchen doors would need to temporarily close due to the devastating effects of COVID-19, we knew we wanted to make a lasting impression and use our resources to support a worthy cause. Within a week our lovely friend and Culinary Creative Director Angela Hartnett reached out to tell us about her friend Lulu Dillon’s inspirational mission to produce home cooked meals for the NHS who were working tirelessly at this difficult time. Lulu had called this incredible project COOK-19. It soon became apparent that we could scale this up to help more of those in need, quicker! As a result, a team of our chefs, alongside Angela and hers headed to our CPU to produce quality cooked meals from donated ingredients to go alongside wonderful care packages to those at home in isolation. At this stage we couldn’t have imagined what an incredible project we had chosen to support.
Over four months we collectively cooked over 50,000 meals for the worthiest of people. Early on in the project we received the following words from a lovely long-term client of Moving Venue:
‘Thank you SO much to your team at Cook-19 for delivering a wonderful menu to my niece who is an NHS midwife at XXXXX!!
She is pregnant with twins herself and lives alone and she is mostly too exhausted to cook – and she loves good food! The working conditions are harder than usual within the heat of the labour ward compounded by the PPE gear.
She is delighted to have your gift and I’m grateful to you for your generosity.’.
To know our efforts were being received so gratefully across hospitals made lockdown life that little bit easier!
Our Operations Director Kim Laley was the brains behind the logistics coordinating deliveries to 13 hospitals per day, six days a week, as well as to individuals’ homes for their care packages. The project was a huge success complete with cookies made by Claudia Winkleman, delivery drivers as glamorous as Dominic Cooper and Gemma Chan, not to mention our dream team of chefs, operations managers, sales team, event planners and directors in the kitchen and out on the road. We were honoured to play a part in COOK-19, a volunteer lead initiative which also had the support of restaurants such as Wahaca, Hawksmoor and 15 Grains.
You can read more about the project in Lulu’s own words at the following link:
https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/lulu-dillon-cook-19-nhs-cooking-initiative
Please rest assured everything was coordinated in strictest adherence to Government/NHS guidelines.
