A NEW community kitchen has been set up in Tranent following the work carried out by two volunteers during the local resilience effort which helped people during the coronavirus lockdown.

Fa’side Community Kitchen will be operated by Duncan McBride and Joyce Thomson, who both cooked about 20,000 meals for local people during lockdown.

Their work was initially part of the community resilience effort in Tranent, which was led by the town’s community council and overseen by its member Mike Falconer.

Joyce started off delivering leaflets for the resilience team alongside her husband Andy.

Ruth Davie, from Fundamental Foods, which set up the emergency food provision in Fa’side and is overlooked by the Pennypit Trust, said she was looking for a chef to cook hot meals and Duncan, who works at The Sheep Heid Inn in Duddingston, Edinburgh, offered his services.

Duncan then approached Joyce and Andy, his long-term friends, and soon got them involved.

They then spent the next few months making thousands of meals from their base in Tranent’s East Lothian Co-operative Bowling Club, where Joyce works behind the bar, and used its kitchens to prepare the meals.

They would be in the bowling club about five or six days a week making about 200 meals a day for those in need.

Joyce said: “It was hard work to start with, we were making 200-250 meals a day but are now down to about 120.”

The pair then decided it was a good idea to carry this work on and set up a community kitchen.

It is hoped that the new community kitchen will be based in the bowling club, although the venue is still to be confirmed.

Duncan and Joyce will continue to work alongside the Pennypit Trust until they can support themselves independently.

It is hoped that Fa’side Community Kitchen will be open and functional by next month, initially with social distancing in place.

It is also a charity, with Joyce currently awaiting confirmation of the charity number.

Joyce said that the community kitchen was set up to “help our most at need community in supplying very low cost meals”, ensuring people continued to get the same quality of food they had under the resilience group.

There is a community kitchen service already in operation in Haddington and the one in Tranent will be run along the same lines, but Joyce said Tranent’s would instead be open every day.

She said she wanted to be able to provide good-quality, low-cost food to as many people as possible of all ages and backgrounds.

There will be different menus on offer, such as those for breakfast and lunch, so prices will vary but remain low.

Joyce said: “We want to target everybody and have as many things on the menu as we can but still try and keep it simple.”

As well as food, she hopes the community kitchen will allow people to meet up and socialise with others.

Some of the plans currently in the works include a dementia-friendly session and working with schoolchildren through the school hub, with deliveries of food still taking place once a week.

A website is also being set up.

Joyce hopes that she and Duncan will be able to give up their jobs at some point in the future and direct all of their time and effort into the community kitchen.

She said: “I’m hoping this takes off really well and will be busy enough every day.

“We’re willing to put every hour into making it a success.

“I feel the community needs some sort of help like this.”

She thanked people who had donated so far, including local resident and bowler Ian James, who has donated a total of £600.

Joyce said: “The amount of friends that have given donations over this time is unbelievable. Anything we need, people come through again and again, it’s totally amazing.”

She added that the overwhelming amount of support so far might be linked to her charity walks that she does every August alongside Brian Forbes. The 10-mile-long walks have raised about £50,000 for various charities since they first took place.

For more information on Fa’side Community Kitchen, email f.dcomkit@gmail.com, call 07938 133382 or search for Fa’side Community Kitchen (FCK) on Facebook.