Newington Fish Bar has given away more than 1,000 free children’s meals so far this week in a bid to help lower income families feeling the squeeze.
The takeaway in Newington Road is giving free sausage and chips for all children this half term (limited to 4 meals per family). There is also free fruit from Our Kitchen on The Isle of Thanet available.
The Newington Road business, operated by brothers Ken and Nigel Derrett since 1980, offered free meals in 2020 when government initially voted not to extend the meals into the holidays and the brothers decided to repeat the offer this year as families struggling with rising food, utility and property costs.
Nigel said: “We did this for the October half term 2020 when the government wouldn’t give the children school meals and we served over 600 children then.
“This time we realised how hard it is for lower income families to cope with everything going up, it seems like we’re all being hit from every direction.
“We rely on our local community for our business so giving a little back hopefully helps and judging by the comments on the Facebook page it has.
“We are also very grateful to ‘Our Kitchen’ for supplying the fruit and other bits, as of today (February17) we have exceeded 1,000 meals for children this week.
“With tomorrow we estimate it will reach 1400 meals. All of the staff have worked really hard to serve the children.”
