Cork's Penny Dinners preparing to serve 1,500 meals on Christmas Day

IN 2013, Cork Penny Dinners was serving about 100 meals a week. Now, a decade later, it regularly serves over 1,000 meals every day, marking an astonishing 6,900% increase over 10 years in demand for its services.

“We’re well over 1,000 meals a day now, we’re all shattered, to be honest, and Christmas always sees demand go way up,” says Caitríona Twomey as she mostly ignores her cup of tea. All around her is the Monday midday bustle of Penny Dinners as the lunchtime rush is starting.

Ms Twomey, who has been volunteer co-ordinator with Penny Dinners for two decades, sat down to take a break and to talk to The Echo, but there is a queue of people making donations to the charity and she says they rely solely on the generosity of donors. Between incoming calls and pinging with messages, her phone never stops.

“It’s all go, especially coming up to the Christmas, but people are so good, they just want to help out, and we wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the of the people of Cork, and often beyond Cork too,” she says.

“We’ll be inundated with calls on Christmas morning. I would expect that we will do well over 1,500 meals on Christmas Day.”

Sit-down Christmas dinners will be served in the Croí na Laoí wellness centre on James Street from 9am until 2pm, with takeaway meals served from Penny Dinners on Little Hanover Street.

The sheer volume of service s coming to Penny Dinners every day means that sit-down meals have not been possible on Little Hanover Street since before covid-19, but the James Street premises will be open again this year for Christmas festivities.

“We’ll have music from the Barrack Street Brass and Reed Band, and we’ll have the High Hopes Choir with special guest Hank Wedel. We’ll have some surprise guests dropping in as well, and Santa will be arriving at Kent Station on the Polar Express before ing us with gifts for everybody,” says Ms Twomey.

“Bishop Fintan Gavin always drops in and s us on Christmas morning, and it’s always good to see him.

“It’s very important that there will be a real family feel to the day, for those that don’t have family, they’ll have us there.

“There are a lot of people who find Christmas a very difficult and lonesome time, so they will have us so they can sit around and enjoy the atmosphere with us.”

'A very special day'

Legend in the city has it that Penny Dinners goes back to the soup kitchens founded in Famine times by the Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, when a meal of a quart of soup and half-loaf of bread cost a penny, but in reality the history of Penny Dinners in Cork probably dates to 1888. 

Even if the charity does not directly have its roots in the Famine, there are historical resonances to be found. It is a recorded fact that in February of 1847 the soup kitchen on Adelaide Street was serving 1,400 meals a day, at a penny each, and such was the demand for soup in a city of 80,000 people that a faster method of heating food had to be devised, with steam diverted from Ebenezer Pike’s adjacent shipyard and blasted into the vats of soup.

The kitchen in Penny Dinners is fully modern and clean as a whistle, but from before dawn on Christmas morning it too will be full of clatter and steam as volunteers get ready for the big day.

“For the volunteers, as much as anyone else, Christmas Day is a very special day, and they are all so, so dedicated to the work we do. To me, the volunteers are the heroes of Cork Penny Dinners,”says Ms Twomey.

Increase in demand

A decade ago, Penny Dinners was serving around 100 meals a week, and typically the people using its services tended to be older and more often than not men, often people who were living with addictions.

In the years since, the numbers calling to Little Hanover Street have skyrocketed and most days now the charity will serve 1,000 meals or more, which represents an increase of around 6,900%.

Volunteers have noted in recent years a pronounced change in the demographics of the people they meet. Penny Dinners still has people calling who are living with addictions, but now the charity’s volunteers are seeing, more and more, working people who are struggling to make ends meet, young people with families, and professionals under pressure to meet mortgage or rent payments.

“There’s no doubt that the cost-of-living crisis has only made things worse for people, with bills being so high that they have no choice but to come to us, so they come and we look after them. We have sometimes people who will come to us for a sandwich on their way to work, and we try and make them feel welcome,” says Ms Twomey.

On Christmas morning on Little Hanover Street and on James Street, all will be made welcome, and treated to a slap-up Christmas meal.

“The River Lee Hotel will supply the dinners, as it does every year, and everyone at Penny Dinners is extremely grateful to general manager Ruairi O’Connor and his staff for their unfailing generosity. The meals during the day will be from the River Lee Hotel, and Michael Turtle will supply a fleet of cars from Exec Cars, as he always does, to deliver food all over the city.

“It’s always a great day for service s and volunteers, and we’ll finish up about 2pm, because then we’ll have the clean-up afterwards, and we’ll have to get ready for the next morning too. And people will want to get home to their own dinners then.”

That said, Ms Twomey adds that nobody will be turned away from the door, even if they do arrive a bit late.

As always, she says, the charity lives by its motto: “We never judge, we serve.”