Rena Rescue Catering
Our involvement started with a phone call from Maritime NZ on the Saturday after Rena ran aground, to see if we could cater for the staff people at the newly-established Incident Command Centre. The following Monday we were up and running, and fed around 200 people for both lunch and dinner.
The next day that number rose to 600, including people working on the beaches and at the National Oiled Wildlife Centre. On the Wednesday, the numbers rose to 845.
At that point, with the salvage effort continuing to grow and likely to continue for months to come, we decided to scale back down to feeding just the Incident Command Centre, and allow other local catering businesses to take a share of the load. Since then things have calmed down, but we've continued to cater for around 200 people a day including visiting MPs, Prime Ministers and officials.
Phew! Now we can get on with business as usual, including running all of the weddings and events that we have booked up for the summer.