Coventry's Barn Kitchen gets Pride of Britain praise for NHS meals service

A Coventry restaurant which has served up more than 60,000 meals for frontline NHS staff has been recognised for its charitable efforts by the Pride of Britain Awards.

The Barn Kitchen’s staff are working for free to feed health workers on the frontline fighting coronavirus after closing to the public during the lockdown.

The Pride of Britain Awards made the Barn Kitchen one of its Heroes of the Week.

In a post on the Pride of Britain Awards Facebook page it said: “We’d like to say a big thank you to the Barn Kitchen in Binley Woods, who have fed 35,000 NHS frontline staff for free in four Warwickshire hospitals during lockdown.

“They started by making afternoon tea boxes and delivered them to the Warwick , Rugby and University Coventry Hospitals and they were so well received that they immediately made some more the next day.

“After noticing that there was no food infrastructure in place in the hospitals they donated £3,500 of their own food and money before starting a public appeal to help to resolve the situation.

“So far they’ve raised nearly £7,000 and their team of 10 volunteers have worked around the clock to deliver 60,500 free meals.

“We think that they are a true example of what community is all about.”

Kelly Iles, who runs the Barn Kitchen, told CoventryLive: “It’s nice to be recognised by them - more than 63,000 meals have now been served.”

The efforts of Kelly, her family and staff have already received recognition far and wide.

CoventryLive highlighted the good work being done and their story has since been picked up on by Good Morning Britain’s Lorraine Kelly and BBC Midlands Today.

The lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus saw the Barn Kitchen close its doors to customers, with its cupboards and fridges brimming with produce for the Mother’s Day weekend.

It came as Kelly was supposed to be celebrating the restaurant’s first birthday.

After her initial devastation - and a lot of crying - Kelly saw an opportunity to help others.

The Leamington resident saw a Facebook post detailing Nando’s generous donation of dinners to staff at Warwick Hospital.

With family connections running strong at the site - Kelly has five aunts working as nurses there - she followed suit.

She and her team initially prepared 200 meals which they took to Warwick Hospital.

The following day they brought another 400 and took 200 to Coventry's University Hospital.

From there on in it grew and doubled each day.

Parcels of macaroni and cheese, penne lasagne, sandwiches, chocolate brownies and scones with jam and cream were among the items being served up by Kelly and her staff - who turned up for work despite there being no financial reward.

After the £2,000 worth of perishable stock at the Barn Kitchen was used up the freezers were then emptied.

Kelly then started dipping into her own pockets to meet demand and launched a link on her company website where people could donate to fund NHS staff meals.

Along with the donations what helped spur Kelly on was the support from other businesses.

One of the first was Soda Folk in Binley Woods which donated 5,000 cans of soft drinks.

Since then Soda Folks’ support has continued but many others have come on board too.

One is the catering wholesaler Booker.

Kelly said: “Booker catering came on board to help us massively.

“They have probably given us £7,000 worth of food.

“They ask us if we want stuff - one day it was 4,500 hotdog sausages so we did hotdog sausages for the hospitals.

“On another occasion it was two tons of bacon.”

Other donations have come from Britvic and Moma Foods, who donated 3,000 pots of porridge.

Supermarket chain Morrisons charity is also a big backer through its charitable arm.

Kelly said Morrisons had given them enough pasta last week alone to do between 2,000 and 4,000 meals.

A donation of a refrigerated trailer from Booker has also helped as it means they can accept more food donations.

Kelly said the initiative involves early starts.

“We get up at 6.30am and we get in the queues for Booker at 7am,” she said.

“We buy as much reduced stock as we can.”

Although she is looking to life beyond lockdown Kelly says she does not really know what the future will be for the Barn Kitchen, particularly as the current location has a long thin layout which is not really suited to social distancing.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen with our business,” she said.

“It’s a nightmare but the morale of the company has been amazing and we have the same ten people, who are all working for nothing.

“We are the closest we have ever been. While everyone else has been on lockdown we have had something rewarding to do.

“Not one person has ever said can we stop, can we slow down.”

Kelly admits she has probably put in £5,000 of her own money to the NHS food project but doesn’t see it as a big deal.

She said: “I just believe if you do good, good comes back somewhere along the line.

“I don’t know where but it will.”

Kelly is continuing to highlight their Just Giving page to accept public donations which helps them to keep going - and keep going they do.

She said: “We keep pushing our Just Giving page.

“I don’t think we can stop yet - the food is still needed and we love doing it.

“We are at 63,00 meals and right now our mission is we would like to hit 100,000 meals.”

For anyone wishing to donate the Barn Kitchen’s Just Giving link can be found here.