Deliveroo to serve 500,000 free meals including pizzas, salads and pasta to NHS workers

Deliveroo will serve 500,000 free meals including pizzas, salads and pasta to NHS workers on the frontlines of Britain’s battle against coronavirus.

Pizza Hut has offered 350,000 meals to the initiative while Itsu and Lewis Hamilton’s Neat Burger have said they will offer a ‘sizeable’ number to the health service.

Deliveroo customers ordering food will also be able to donate through the app, contributing funds to buy meals for nurses and doctors. 

Hospitals and NHS staff have been working long hours and in difficult conditions as they treat patients suffering from the virus. 

Deliveroo said it would start deliveries next week after talking to hospitals to identify ‘where need is greatest’. 

The company’s CEO and founder, Will Shu, said NHS staff are the ‘real heroes of this crisis’.

‘We want to do our small part to support them,’ he said. ‘Thanks to our dedicated riders the generosity of our restaurant partners and their teams who are keeping kitchens open to serve those most in need, we hope to be able to make a difference.

‘Deliveroo is a British business and, as the founder, nothing would make me more proud than to use the network we have built to support the NHS, and I know the restaurant sector wants to play its part too.’

The Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock, who has tested positive for coronavirus, thanked the delivery giant and the restaurants, saying he was ‘delighted’ that the NHS would receive the donations.   

‘The nation needs the NHS like never before, and we must support every single colleague in the NHS,’ he said in a statement.

‘I’m delighted that Deliveroo and partners are playing their part in this great national effort with half-a-million meals for the NHS. We can best come through this if we pull together.’ 

Competitor Just Eat has said it will offer 33 per cent off all orders for NHS staff during the crisis.

Uber Eats is also offering 25 per cent off for NHS staff through its app.

The UK’s coronavirus death toll leapt by 209 today to 1,228, while infections rose by 2,483 to 19,522. 

NHS hospitals across the country are reportedly struggling to cope with the influx of patients, and having to turn away those seeking treatment for other conditions.

The government has started building overflow hospitals. The NHS Nightingale has been set up at London’s ExCel centre to help them deal with an influx of patients.  

A campaign to provide hospital staff with hot meals backed by actors Matt Lucas, Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory has surpassed £400,000 in donations.

A partnership between restaurant chain Leon, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and UCLH Healthcare NHS Trust, the FeedNHS campaign is aiming to raise £1 million to provide 6,000 meals a day for hospitals in the capital.

A similar campaign called Meals for the NHS has raised more than £250,000 to help provide free hot meals for frontline staff – less than seven days after it was launched by a small group of friends.

It has since provided 4,000 meals to hospitals with tens of thousands more expected soon.

Andrew Muir Wood, one of the founders, told the PA news agency: ‘It’s hard for anyone to operate on an empty stomach let alone people trying to save lives, so we got together trying to work out how we could solve that.’