A Dunedin community restaurant has come up with a new way to help feed hungry people in the community.
The Bowling Club asks diners to help with deliveries on their way home, paying forward the good will.
Jackie Bannon and Liam Arthur own the Caversham restaurant where all meals were $4 and and many customers paid for an extra one, to go to someone in need. Arthur told Breakfast: "We didn't really know how it was going to work to be honest.
"We started off running this business out of a food truck and we had no idea what we were doing, we barely had any money to start with, we just decided that we wanted to give it a go."
He said the response has been "overwhelming".
The pair wanted to create a place where socially isolated people could be together, Bannon added.
"And not only gather but really feel the abundance and feel welcome and feel safe," she said.
"And also to do something with all that energy, when people gather there's quite a lot of power in it."
The restaurant made about 1000 meals every day. Arthur said: "We might serve about 800 or 900 in the restaurant and then we pack 100 or 200 meals up every night to be frozen for the free meal deliveries.
"We weren't doing this free frozen meal delivery thing until a few weeks ago – but the thing is, we just kept on getting messages from people who couldn't come to our restaurant because they live in other parts of Dunedin and Dunedin's a pretty big city."
The menu was different each day the restaurant wasopen, he explained.
The Bowling Club was open for four-and-a-half hours every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
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