Adelaide restaurant Plus 82 Pocha delivers meals to the homeless during COVID-19 pandemic
An Adelaide restaurateur and his team have hand delivered more than 20 meals to people in need.
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When social-distancing rules forced Plus 82 Pocha to close, its team decided to make the most of the empty kitchen.
The Grenfell St eatery’s chef cooked more than 20 classic Korean dishes for the team to hand deliver to the city’s homeless.
Owner Hyunwoo Kang said the idea to deliver meals to the homeless was born when business died down because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It was really quiet for us once coronavirus started and we were walking around Adelaide and noticed a lot of homeless people,” Kang said.
“Because it was so quiet, our chef decided to cook a meal for all of our staff to come and pick up for themselves. So we thought ‘why don’t we also do some extra for the people around us?’.
“Some places would normally get homeless people to come collect meals but obviously when social distancing came into effect, they couldn’t do that any more so that’s why we decided to start delivering the meals.”
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Kang and his team delivered the classic Korean meals with beef or chicken with rice to people in the streets around the restaurant.
He filmed the experience in the hope of encouraging others to support each other in any way they can.
“Most people took the meals and said ‘thank you so much’ and that made me feel both happy and sad,” Kang said.
“Other people, if they were sleeping, we just left the meals there for them.”
His team is talking about doing things like this more regularly in the future.
