Côte restaurants have celebrated its special festive campaign helping children living with food insecurity who are at risk of going to school hungry, as well as aiming to reduce paper waste.
Every year the team at Côte restaurants spend £40,000 on Christmas crackers for guests to enjoy with their festive meals.
But this year, with the cost of living crisis impacting many families, they decided to donate this money to Magic Breakfast instead.
The charity provides nutritious breakfasts to hungry school children as fuel for learning and expert support for their schools. They are aiming to end hunger as a barrier to education in UK schools for children living with food insecurity.
Côte’s Christmas menu launched on November 30 and will run right through until December 24. Guests have enjoyed a seasonal, French-inspired 3-course Christmas menu, just without the additional decoration of crackers.
The donation will now support thousands of children and will also help to combat mass paper waste created by Christmas crackers.
Côte has already donated over £200,000 Magic Breakfast and is aiming for more to follow in the new year, in addition to the Christmas cracker £40,000.
Jane Holbrook from Côte restaurants said: “Magic Breakfast do amazing work that positively impacts the lives of thousands of children. We are big fans of what they do and over the last couple of years, our team and owners have donated over £200,000.
We decided we should do more, so we’ve donated the money that would have been spent on Christmas crackers to them, so they can buy thousands of breakfasts for children who really need it.”
Côte restaurants are dedicated to giving back to the local community they live in, with a number of planned events in 2023. They want to introduce staff and guests to the charities they work with and the challenges they face.
This Christmas, Côte also donated 21,000 turkey and vegetable portions to The Felix Project in London and a further 2,300 portions to six Crisis sites in London, Birmingham, Merseyside, Newcastle, South Wales and Coventry.