A Rochdale publican has been hailed as a community hero, cooking around 500 free meals for the whole community, every day for the past few weeks.

Brian Perkins is licensee at Admiral Taverns‘ Heywood pub and is helping the elderly, vulnerable, and homeless, as well as NHS frontline staff in his area.

The food on offer ranges from sandwiches and salad boxes to cooked meals, including home-made meatloaf, fish and chips, burgers and hot dogs. He even supplied more than 300 easter eggs, to make sure every child in the community had an easter egg on the special day.

Brian Perkins
Brian Perkins at work in his kitchen

He also has kids boxes available, including chicken nuggets. This is all free of charge, sourced from donations in the community as well as around £9,000 of his own money. 

He has recently been delivering special cakes to anyone in the community celebrating a birthday, again free of charge, as well as cooking more than 500 Sunday roasts for the community.

Brian has decided to continue putting in that extra effort in delivering food to the elderly and helping where he can after the lockdown has ended, so will continue to deliver meals when needed for anyone in the community. 

As these are free meals, all the food has come from himself, locals who have kindly donated, and Morrisons, who heard about Brian’s story and have donated food. The community has been so supportive of Brian, who is always going the extra mile to give back to a wonderful community. His regular staff are even helping out in their free time, while following strict health and safety guidelines.