The videos were released on YouTube and included a longer video that thanked the whole restaurant industry, as well as a series of shorter videos directed at individual restaurants which helped in the charity’s campaigns.
They were released on Thanksgiving, to mark the ‘synergies’ between giving thanks and sharing food. This month is also the time when the charity collects money from the restaurants taking part in its ‘Love Food Give Food’ campaign, where participating restaurants add a voluntary £1 to their customers’ bills to be donated to the charity.
Senior restaurant campaign officer at Action Against Hunger Caroline Dyer told BigHospitality that the amount of money raised this year was ‘phenomenal’.
“We’ve had so much support, so we wanted to do something extra special for the restaurants too,” she explained.
“Us being a charity we don’t have any money to spend on doing anything too fancy, so we thought we would get all of the office together to say a thank you from everybody.”
From big chains to individual restaurants
The shorter videos released by the charity thank both individual restaurants and larger restaurant chains. They focus on restaurants that have raised smaller amounts of money through innovative projects, as well as those that have raised a great deal.
“We wanted to thank some of our bigger fundraisers,” said Dyer. “For example, Carluccio’s, which has raised over £1m for us while we've worked together, and Hawksmoor which is about to hit £0.5m.”
“But we also wanted to thank smaller companies. These included Square Pie, which raised over £600 doing a ‘pie drive’ for us, and Sticky Walnut, which raised money by giving us a whole day’s takings from World Food Day in October; no other restaurant has ever done that for us.
“We want restaurants to recognise that whether they’ve raised £600 or £1m, we appreciate all contributions we get.”
Action Against Hunger hopes to raise £1m from the restaurant industry by the end of the year.