Corby’s Low Cost Kitchen dishes out over 800 free school meals to families in need

The food service is usually run fortnightly at Corby Irish Centre and aims to provide good quality meals at affordable prices.

However this summer, they set out to feed as many children who are entitled to free school meals as possible.

Throughout August they ran eight buffets at the Irish Centre (every Tuesday and Wednesday) where children under 18 ate for free and adults ate for a small fee of £2.

Simon Brunskill, the local chef who runs the service, said: “The summer programme with the Low Cost Kitchen was insane. I didn’t expect those kinds of numbers that we were doing.

“We did 40 people on the first one and then on the second we did 180. I was cooking like a madman.

“Every Tuesday afterwards I went to open the door and there’d be 10 to 15 people already there.

“On the third week I opened the door on the Tuesday at around 11.30am and I had a group of boys come in, they were sheepish and asked ‘is this where you get the buffet’ so I said ‘yeah come in guys!’. They’d just come down without their parents, came in an ate, literally obliterated every chicken nugget I had but it was really nice to see a group young lads come in, they usually get a bad rep for themselves but it was good, they had all their bikes parked outside, it felt like 1980 again.

“It was a really, really good vibe in there.”

Having seen the demand for the service, Simon has set out to make sure they do the same again next year but bigger.

He said: “It was full multiple times, I had people sitting outside, and in the end we just had people taking the food home.

“There’s demand for it, which means going harder next year. We’ve done two days, let’s see if we can build the fund up and do it three or four days a week. I could’ve done it every day, and it would've got used every day.

“I got a couple of cards which I totally didn’t expect. That threw me off a little bit when this little boy came up with a thank you card, I got really choked up.”

For the summer programme the Low Cost Kitchen received help and donations from Argos - who donated 100 breakfast bags, Morrisons - who donated £220 worth of groceries, Wincanton (Simon’s workplace) - who paid for him to be off work and run the buffets, Morthyng Vocational College - who had students come to buffets to do work experience, and Corby Irish Centre - who give Simon the space free of charge.

Throughout the winter period, until April, the Low Cost Kitchen will be changing to once a month rather than fortnightly but Simon is looking to introduce a delivery meal prep service during this time.

Each week people will be able to buy the meals ready made which will be available for delivery. Meals will be £4 each and there will also be a family bundle of five meals for £16.

Simon is looking to start rolling this service out in November.