HARD-working NHS staff were boosted thanks to a free meal as KFC restaurants made huge donations.

Restaurants across Essex donated more than 2,000 meals to NHS staff across Basildon, Southend and Broomfield hospitals.

The 18 chicken shops in the county, managed by Kefco Sales, have closed in the past week following government guidance to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

However, the franchise did not want to let the chicken go to waste, so had the teams cook and deliver stock to 1,000 people in Southend Hospital, 500 in Basildon Hospital and 750 at Broomfield Hospital.

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

Warren Miller, people capability coach at Kefco Sales, said: “Throughout the evening and early hours of the morning I was looking through Facebook community groups.

“I managed to get a list of names and locations that we could safely drop off large quantities of chicken.

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

“We had nine restaurants involved in the cooking and delivery. The teams were smaller than usual as we were only planning on cleaning the restaurant for closing initially, but luckily other team members jumped on board, and this became a joint team effort to help.

“The 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.”