Cooking for a cause: Michelle Cain, Moama RSL chief executive Ashley Menzies, McDonald's licensee Courtney Moller, Kahli Reeves, Leigh Keillor, Lachlan Keillor and Maddy McCormack-Hall.
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Never would it cross your mind that McDonald’s food would be cooked out of anywhere but a McDonald’s restaurant. Moama RSL has just proven otherwise.
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At the height of the flood warnings, Moama RSL opened not only its kitchen but its hearts to those working tirelessly on the sandbagging line.
It provided more than 1000-1500 meals to the volunteers over the course of a week.
When Echuca McDonald’s licensees Scott and Courtney Moller got wind of this, they offered to send over some food that would otherwise have been wasted.
Moama RSL chief executive Ashley Menzies said it was just one of many wonderful examples of the community rallying to help others.
“Courtney reached out and said they could see that our team was doing meals for volunteers and offered to help out in any way they could,” Mr Menzies said.
“They had a lot of frozen food that they thought they may lose because they needed to turn the freezers off.
“They very graciously donated some of their food to the club, which was great because their kitchen was closed and we were starting to run low on food supplies.”
Teamwork: Moama RSL chief executive Ashley Menzies and McDonald's licensee Courtney Moller.
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Mr Menzies said the decision to feed the community was a no-brainer.
“We’re a community-based organisation and we love to help the community as best we can, in whatever ways we can,” he said.
“We have the equipment, we have the manpower and we certainly have the ability with our great team of chefs to actually cook for masses of people or large groups of people.”
Mr Menzies said he was proud to see the entire RSL team lending a helping hand in the community.
“Once they secured their own homes, they were out sandbagging and securing other people’s homes,” he said.
“Our executive chef Dave Palmer was at the forefront in terms of coming up with the concept for providing meals. He and his team worked all day down at the sandbags, then they’d knock off from there and then open up the kitchen to cook evening meals for the volunteers.
“Not only did our kitchen crew cook, but they also drove the food down in our refrigerated food van and handed it out to people as well. That is just a super effort.”
Mr Menzies said they weren’t the only ones supplying food down at the Moama Recreation Reserve.
Others were serving fresh fruit, cakes and water.
“It was a fantastic community effort,” he said.
“I’m just so very proud of our whole team, in this time of crisis we’re still out helping the community even though some of their own homes were under threat.”
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