A FRANCHISE of a global food chain has been doing its part in helping the NHS during the coronavirus outbreak.

Kefco Sale Ltd is an Essex based franchise of the global fast food giant KFC.

With 18 restaurants across Essex, the company recently closed their stores following the decision by the government to place the nation in lockdown.

However, not content with sitting idly by, the chain recently decided to use their skills and resources to support our NHS staff during this difficult period.

Working in tandem across all of their Essex chains, teams of workers prepared, cooked and delivered thousands of pieces of chicken, otherwise destined to go to waste.

One such franchise involved was that of the Galley's Corner KFC in Braintree.

Run day to day by manager Lewis Sheehan, him and his team organised the Braintree restaurants cooking, delivering to hardworking staff at the Halstead Hospital and Halstead Care Home.

Warren Miller, the PCC (People Capability Coach) at Kefco, said: "After hearing that we were closing all our restaurants, our first thought was the food – it’s fresh chicken, so we really didn’t want it going to waste.

"We were thinking of how best to give away the leftover food and came up with the idea pretty quickly.

"We asked our KFC restaurant teams across Essex to get in touch with local charities, donation programmes, and emergency workers to support them through this crisis.

"We wanted to send a few buckets over to the hospital – then all the team members got involved and it escalated into one huge KFC team effort.

"By 8am when our restaurant teams arrived into work, we had a plan on where we were going to deliver, and how much was needed.

"It was all hands on deck and we began cooking and arranging all our deliveries.

"As it turns out, we had 1000 people to feed in Southend, 750 in Broomfield, Chelmsford and 500 in Basildon, and that was just within the hospitals - not including ambulance control rooms we delivered to as well.

"In total we sent out 7,701 pieces of chicken to a variety of organisations including hospital staff, care homes, fire services, teachers, the food bank and homeless shelter.

"We know we’ve only played a small part in what will be a long journey, but hope our actions will encourage other people and restaurants to do the same over the next few weeks.

"The whole team have been so supportive of our efforts helping the community.

"We couldn’t have got anywhere near making deliveries to everyone we did without their enthusiasm for making this work.

"Closing in situations like this is difficult, so it was amazing to give back to our community before we did."