A lunch for care home staff and a boost for local business.
A Cogeco lunch campaign aims to spread a bit of joy to long-term care workers, while at the same time supporting local restaurants through the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Friday, the Irish Harp Pub was busy preparing lunches for the staff at Upper Canada Lodge and Niagara Long Term Care Residence, two care homes in Old Town Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Robert Rende, community relations co-ordinator for Cogeco, said the program has been going for about two months and is a way of showing appreciation for long-term care staff.
“We're delivering lunches to long-term care homes as our way of saying thank you for all the hard work they've been doing,” Rende said during an interview at the Irish Harp.
“They're putting themselves out there every day. And we want to say thank you. And this initiative was twofold. We know because of this pandemic restaurants were hit hard. We strongly encourage people to support local, so we purchased the food from a local restaurant to say thank you for all the hard work they've been doing and we deliver to the long-term care staffs, to say thank you for all the work that they've been doing.”
He said the initiative has been received “very well” by both long-term care staff and the restaurants involved.
“I've seen tears, I've seen huge smiles. They're very gracious and appreciative of what we've been doing.”
Jovie Jokie, owner of the Irish Harp, said it's great to be able to contribute to the community, something the Harp has done often.
“It's always nice when we can be involved with that,” Joki said.
“And then just the business itself is so important because we need any kind of sale that we can get, and this was nice that they thought of us.”
The Harp also donated desserts for the meals, to add a little something from the restaurant.
“We wanted to donate as well, so we added the little desserts.”
The meals were sandwiches, one vegetarian with roasted veggies and goat cheese, and another with chicken and roasted vegetables. All lunches also included a house salad and sticky toffee desserts.
Jovie said she's thankful to Cogeco for picking the restaurant.
“This really helped us as well. So, not only donating to them, they're helping a business in the community.”
