For our latest member spotlight we caught up with Jas Kadar, owner of Poor Boys, the New Orleans Street Food restaurant in the Griffin Centre, who have gone from strength to strength this past year in spite of the challenges brought on by the pandemic.
“”Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible”. This sentiment was written on our first ever Instagram post back in April of 2017, it’s a quote by Saint Francisi; it largely sums up our ethos and has been well practiced throughout the past year.
As an independent family run restaurant we’ve become accustomed to working in survival mode and have become resilient in doing so, we’ve been fortunate enough to have the most wonderful of humans work with us and the team here are a real benchmark for having a ‘can-do’ attitude; we get up early and we go home late!
Around week 3 of the initial national lockdown, we’d found our feet operating a Click n’ Collect, Take Out and Delivery service. It was a gargantuan challenge (remember, we were at that point, a small 35 cover restaurant, that hadn’t previously operated with a delivery service) with regard to timings, volumes of orders and mainly; dealing with people that were frustrated by circumstance but had a get out, or some form of normality by being able to have restaurant prepared food. With the stabilisation and growth of the restaurant; we at no point furloughed any staff, in fact, we began to aggressively hire as we saw our levels of trade double and in turn, triple.
Having been blessed and grateful for this, we began to offer support to a number of Charitable organisations, the team and I went regularly to Kingsgate Church to cook and prepare meal boxes for local vulnerable folk, we cooked almost daily for one organisation or another, and most importantly cooked for the people, that were literally cooking for the people! We cooked school meals and continue to do so, we cooked for the Ambulance service, a large number of wards at Kingston hospital, the maintenance team at the hospital, refuse workers, teachers, police, old folks’ homes, did a wonderful VE Day feast for the folks at the Royal Star & Garter in Surbiton, that was probably the most fulfilling, I remember heading up there and seeing them all having a grand old shindig, it really was beaut!
If I’m to look back at this year it will be with an air of forgiveness, faith in humanity, kindness and above most, gratefulness.
Much love, Jas & The Poor Boys”
We love to hear from our members how things are going. If you are interested in contributing to our member and consumer newsletter, please contact joelle.fry@kingtonfirst.co.uk.
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