A local restaurant has raised £2,000 for the St Albans and District Foodbank through its Food To Go service, which it launched at the start of the first lockdown.

Lussmanns Grill launched its Food To Go service in March last year to help support Hertfordshire communities through the first lockdown after turning its St Albans restaurant into a "dark kitchen", producing boxes of food and meals for local delivery.

The Food To Go continued throughout 2020 and 2021 and by the time the service came to an end when the restaurants reopened in April, Lussmanns had delivered 100,000 meals.

From each item sold, Lussmanns made a 2p donation to the St Albans and District Foodbank, which now totals £2,000.

Founder and MD Andrei Lussmann said: "The last 18 months devastated the hospitality industry, and I and many other businesses fought hard to survive through that difficult time. However it was also exceptionally challenging for our communities across the UK with many people who have never had to rely on food banks forced to do so.

"There is always someone worse off than you, and we wanted to do what we could to support them and decided that even if we donated just 2p per delivery meal we sold, over time this would grow to a sizeable amount.

"Helping others, even in a small way, every time we made a sale from our Food To Go service and Celebration Boxes for special occasions seemed like the most logical thing to do.”

St Albans and District Foodbank was set up in May 2014 and runs six weekly foodbanks. Last year was their busiest ever and they gave out 11,000 food parcels in 12 months.

Operational manager Emma Dalton said: "We are so grateful to Lussmans for their support and generous donation. At the moment we are concentrating on holiday hunger and planning ahead; we are expecting to get even busier once the furlough scheme ends.

"During the pandemic the Government increased Universal Credit payments by £20 per week and there are plans for the uplift to end soon. The Trussell Trust and other organisations have launched the Keep the Lifeline campaign which is calling on the government to make the uplift permanent and extend it to ‘legacy' benefits.”