MacGregor's Bar and Inverness Taxis set to deliver free Christmas dinners to those who are struggling to make ends meet during the festive period
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Two city firms are stepping up to help those who are struggling this Christmas by providing free food for the festive weekend.
MacGregor’s Bar in Academy Street has had a number of cancellations since the stricter Covid-19 restrictions were announced last week.
But rather than letting food just go to waste they have decided to deliver Christmas meals to local families tomorrow.
Inverness Taxis is also delivering food to families in the area tomorrow in a bid to give something back to the community and help those in need at this time of year.
Jo De Sylva, from MacGregor's, said they had seen a "huge number" of booking cancellations and while they had originally planned to deliver just 10 meals to families in need but later decided to double that because of the great demand.
She said: "We've had an unbelievable number of requests, it has been mental, we probably had over 100 requests.
"It was open to anybody, it was basically the fact that, because we had so many cancellations and we had the food there, it was a matter of 'we can't use it, we are not going to use it, do you know what, there will be somebody else that probably would be quite thankful of it'."
She said the pub restaurant's chefs were working anyway and added: "Rather than standing around doing nothing, let's make something good out of a bad situation."
Gavin Johnston, managing director of Inverness Taxis, said the firm always tried to give something back at this time of year and this time around had, like MacGregor's, seen requests for help at three figure levels.
Almost two years of dealing with the pandemic, he said, have been hard for so many people.
"Some of the requests were from people who could not buy or organise a Christmas dinner," he said. "So that is the sort of thing we are working with."
The hospitality sector has been particularly hard hit over the past week in the face of fears about the Omicron variant of Covid-19 and official advice to the public to limit their social contacts in the run up to Christmas Day.
Norman MacDonald, who runs Café 1 in Castle Street, said like MacGregor's he has also been getting cancellations though fortunately that had not led to any food going to waste yet.
"We haven't had any wastage yet and everything we use is fresh," he said. "Our concerns are logistics and planning."
He said that last Friday should have seen 235 people sitting down to meals at the popular restaurant, but in the end just 165 had turned up, the rest cancelling their bookings.
"We lost 70 people which is not inconsiderable. but then I am one of the lucky ones because I still managed to do 165," he said.
"The situation now is that we have turkeys sitting in a field and we don't know if we are going to kill them or not – I know what they are voting for!"
In the event that any of his supplies could not be used in the restaurant he said he would look to donate it to NHS workers rather than seeing it simply thrown away.
• For anyone in need and struggling Café Ness at Inverness Cathedral in Ardross Street will be open between 11.30am and 2.30pm offering free Christmas lunches. For more information contact 01463 231875.
