Copy from May's TUCO Magazine.
At ADELIE, its Urban Eat brand has adapted its offer to include meal bags for every meal occasion (breakfast, lunch and dinner). It is now supplying over 100,000 of these weekly to frontline staff at the NHS, schoolchildren and key workers. It says it is proud to supply Great Ormond Street on behalf of McColls with Urban Eat sandwiches and wraps as well as delivering milk and bread.
The UK’s leading foodservice wholesalers, BRAKES and BIDFOOD, have joined forces to support a new government initiative to ensure that vital food supplies reach the country’s most vulnerable people during the coronavirus crisis. The initiative will see the two companies working together to potentially deliver hundreds of thousands of weekly care packages across the country to people at high risk from the virus who are not able to get easy access to food at this challenging time. BRAKES has also launched a home delivery and call & collect services, called Food Shop.
BIRCHALL FOODSERVICE has launched a Call & Collect service, Birchall Foods. Hundreds of people have collected food and cleaning essentials from the depot on Burnley Bridge Business Park in Hapton, and they report that its phone lines are still buzzing every day.
Similarly CREED FOODSERVICE has launched a Click & Collect service for the local public, which is helping its local communities to source food and drink as safely and easily as possible during the Covid-19 pandemic.
DAWN FOODS is offering specially designed point of sale and signposting for caterers for use during the current coronavirus pandemic. All digital artwork files are FREE at https://www.dawnfoods.com/uk/covid-19 for all bakers and caterers, not just Dawn customers, to send to their local printers and use in-store.
Developed for foodservice businesses who are offering a takeaway service, each kit contains posters, counter signs and floor decals to promote the bakery offering and encourage the importance of social distancing among customers. The ready to print artwork files can simply be downloaded from the Dawn website and sent electronically to a local printing company.
DCUK FM has donated Respiratory Protective Equipment and Personal Protective Equipment to two hospitals in Cambridge and London. The first hospital to receive donations was Guys & St Thomas’ NHS Trust (GSTT) in London, where 30 half masks and filters along with 200 coveralls were donated. Additionally, 50 disposable coveralls, 20 eye protection goggles and glasses, 1000 surgical gloves and 250 overshoes were donated to Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. It has also assisted in confined space attendance to allow contractors to install new medical gas lines to Covid-19 wards and carried out asbestos removal to a new recovery ward for Covid-19 patients at GSTT.
DUCTBUSTERS engineers have been working around the clock on two Nightingale hospitals – one in Harrogate and one in Glasgow. It provided ductwork and air handling unit servicing for the new Nightingale hospital at Harrogate Convention Centre, working closely with Morley Ventilation.
FREEMAN BUTCHERS are still open and currently delivering to NHS Hospitals, North East Care and Residential Homes, Free school meals to North East schools, Deliveries and contributions to local food banks and deliveries to local authority meals on wheels. It has managed to retain two thirds of its staff (the remaining third furloughed).
MC KELLY has been working with the Country Food Trust, a charity set up to provide protein to those in food poverty via food banks and a variety of other routes. Recently it has used its contacts and accounts to source and supply 16.5 tonnes of chicken fillet at cost. It has also supplied four tonnes of mixed goods at cost from our own production consisting of pheasant meat, venison mince, chicken and duck cuts. It is now operating as two businesses: The Meat Box Company (www.themeatboxcompany.co.uk) which sends out boxes of meat overnight to homes and The Farmers Dog which provides raw dog food to owners.
NWCE FOODSERVICE EQUIPMENT in Bolton are offering all Education facilities the services of one of their fully qualified engineers, free of charge, to assist in switching back on units and ensuring they are safe to use. Whilst on site their engineer will, if required, carry out a free no obligation health check of all equipment ensuring a systematic inspection of the equipment. NWCE are also providing a rapid response to an urgent request for NHS equipment following an urgent request from Royal Lancaster Infirmary for four regeneration ward service trollies to be used on the newly opened COVID 19 only wards. The units are used to transport and serve hot and cold meals, helping to keep patients safe, fed and comfortable.
JOHN PALIN WHOLESALE LTD has been continuing to operate at full strength. It has also helped to provide over 8000 hampers to school children throughout three counties to ensure they could still access food during the Easter holidays. More locally, it has created a new website to offer its produce to local residents, through both click and collection facilities at local businesses and a free home delivery service to the elderly, vulnerable and those who are self-isolating. This new initiative has enabled it to deliver essential products, ranging from weekly fresh fruit, vegetable and salad boxes, through to an additional 120 items we have sourced and placed online for people to order.
At GW PRICE LTD, they are delivering fruit, vegetables, morning goods, tinned products, dairy on a daily basis with no delivery charge or minimum order for vulnerable and self-isolating people and have created a new website especially for this service. All goods are delivered in chilled vans and it is currently delivering over 1000 boxes per week. It is also giving NHS staff free fruit as well as donating special boxes of fruit and toiletries to 70 front line workers at Ashgate Hospice.
RIBBLE FARM FARE has turned over to household deliveries too. It is delivering around 700 boxes a week to vulnerable people. It has designed four made-up boxes which include a vegetable box, fruit box, breakfast box and a dairy box.
Working in partnership with NUTRITANK MEDICAL STUDENT COMMUNITY, SOHO SANDWICHES is donating wraps and snacking pots to the front line staff including those working for the Islington Ambulance Service, as well as turning around new recipes in five days! It is also helping community food banks in partnership with charity Adra UK. It has launched Soho Kitchen too, a hot meals catering service to support key workers.
SWIFT MAINTENANCE SERVICES has continued carrying out urgent repairs to catering equipment, commercial refrigeration and laundry equipment as well as supplying and installing new appliances for a wide range of essential services providers including urgent combi oven and dishwasher replacements to NHS hospital kitchens in Birmingham; repairs to kitchen extraction systems at a number of care homes to get kitchens back up and running; and repairs to oven ranges, combination ovens and dishwashers to a number of local authority and private care homes in the West and East Midlands.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak began, TWO SERVICES has carried out decontamination cleans at office buildings, hospitals and a Crown Court. It also performed a decontamination clean of the restaurant and catering areas at a private hospital in London. The disinfectants irreversibly bind, penetrate and immobilise bacteria, viruses and fungi so they can’t replicate, leaving surfaces disinfected and safe.
