About Us
“ If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that people and communities can do amazing things when they unite together behind a common cause. ”
Our Story
(That’s a wrap! We’ve made our final delivery of Meals to the NHS, for now.)
Meals for the NHS began on 21st March 2020, with a group of friends becoming increasingly concerned about overwhelmed and overworked NHS staff battling COVID-19.
Working shifts up to 14-hours long, with no access to food after 5pm and PPE restrictions making it almost impossible to find a meal outside hospital walls - NHS staff had a serious problem, and it needed to be solved.
We focused on 5 Guiding Principles as we grew out our organisation:
- Move fast, help now
- Effortless for all
- Keep it local
- Adapt and learn
- We’re not precious
With an outpouring of support from the general public helping to raise over £1.8m from over 17,000 donors, our growing team of +100 determined volunteers got to work, sourcing hospital contacts and delicious food providers and funding...
Fast forward 101 days (30th June 2020), and as we saw hospitals reduce their orders for meals as COVID-19 cases subsided, we wrapped up our mission.
With the help of our amazing food providers, we’ve delivered 300,000th meal to the incredible people on the NHS frontline covering 125 hospitals. We are so proud of what we’ve collectively achieved with you all in this period of time and we want to thank you wholeheartedly for your continued support.
As our journey comes to a close, we hope that you too can look back with pride, knowing you’ve helped make a real difference during an unbelievably difficult time.
With 💙.
The Meals for the NHS Team
Our Volunteer Team
This all started with a small group of friends, but delivering hundreds of thousands of meals needed help. We built up a small army of incredibly talented and experienced operators, tech and process geeks and logistics experts from companies including Deliveroo, Uber, Monzo, Spotify, Google, McKinsey and many more, all giving their time.
Together we worked out how to spend your donations in the best possible way to get food to NHS staff.
Our 100% donation model
Meals for the NHS uniquely runs a 100% model. All donations go only to direct costs for meals for NHS staff — that’s food, delivery and payments processing for website donations.
We are registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee operating on a non-for profit basis.
