Entrepreneur raised in Guernsey receives BEM
AN ENTREPRENEUR who grew up in Guernsey has been recognised with a British Empire Medal for his efforts in providing restaurant-quality, healthy meals for frontline NHS staff during the pandemic.
Since lockdown, Oli Coles used his marketing and entrepreneurial expertise to launch Hospitality For Heroes, a not-for-profit initiative providing 20,000 meals a week for the NHS frontline across 11 London hospitals.
He was listed in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List and said he had to do a double-take when he saw the news.
‘I had just finished a morning swim and walking to my car I checked my emails on my phone to see one from the Cabinet Office, with the opening line “The Prime Minister has asked me to inform you…”,’ he said.
‘It was quite something and all a bit surreal.’
The letter went on to explain that due to Covid-19 the Queen’s Honours List had not only been postponed but that Her Majesty was also recognising an extra 450 people across the country for their community efforts during lockdown and beyond.
Mr Coles said: ‘I feel truly honoured and importantly feel that many others are equally as deserving of this medal, in particular Amelia Wix, who came on board at Hospitality for Heroes early on, brought in a tremendous amount of funding and handled the purchase and distribution of all produce.’
He said his family had been as surprised as he was, but very proud.
In mid-March news of canteens in hospitals closing and a countrywide lockdown looming made it clear that there was going to be a big problem for front line workers and also for the hospitality industry.
The introduction of the furlough scheme meant that top chefs were being paid and had time on their hands.
Local produce suppliers were also suddenly out of places to sell their goods.
Marrying all of these together, Mr Coles saw an opportunity, albeit a challenging one, and so set out to think about how best to raise money.
‘Using my digital marketing experience we started an Instagram “nominate” challenge which saw chefs and indeed people at home sharing healthy recipes, nominating others to do the same and ultimately driving people to our website where we accepted donations.
‘It snowballed from there. From our team’s efforts we were able to pump £150,000 into the hospitality supplier industry and provide over 80,000 meals to multiple hospitals.’
Half-way through the campaign, a head nurse contacted him through the charity’s Instagram account asking if they could do something extra special for her amazing team of 30 nurses on International Nurses Day.
‘Food was the obvious answer, so we did that but we thought how nice it would be to get a number of famous faces together to say thanks to them on a special day.
‘So we set about organising a surprise concert with the support of Chloe Delevingne which we streamed into multiple hospitals across the country on International Nurses Day.’
The concert was hosted by Laura Whitmore and included performances from Mel C, James Blunt, Clean Bandit, Anne Marie, Zara Larsson, Jack Savoretti and Elderbrook.
Mr Coles said it was great to be able to do something a little different for our heroes.
