Hundreds of fresh-cooked meals have been delivered to families in need through a joint effort by an upmarket hotel and a bank.Sebastien Maingourd, general manager at The Loren at Pink Beach, said the hotel and its staff were delighted to take part in the programme funded with $150,000 from Butterfield Bank. Mr Maingourd added: “Everybody wants to help. We have always been a hotel that tried to interact and communicate with the local community, so it is a good way for us to give back.“Every single Loren team member can feel the stress in Bermuda right now — we understand the struggle that people are going through, so we are excited to do something to help. It’s a programme we are trying to grow and, hopefully, prolong because we see people are in need.”The Tucker’s Town hotel is preparing 500 meals a day and 11 churches have signed up to help with distribution. Mr Maingourd said the scheme, which launched on Wednesday, was the brainchild of Butterfield, which contacted The Loren.He added: “Butterfield has been around for 160 years and, being a bank, they sensed right away the financial struggle people were going to get into.“Very early on, they were thinking about what they could do to help the community and we had a kitchen that was fully operating because of our takeaway business.“We had a full team working downstairs producing meals on a daily basis, so they came to the conclusion that it made sense to sponsor a programme where lots of meals were produced for Bermuda’s most needy.”Mr Maingourd said the programme would continue until the end of the month. He added the meals were variations on staples from the Loren menu, including teriyaki glazed chicken and chimichurri steak.He said: “We didn’t want to do something completely different from what we usually do. We have a strong culinary focus here, so we have tried to reproduce and replicate the recipes that we usually do for our regular takeaway menus.“It’s healthy food and well balanced.”Mr Maingourd added the response had been overwhelming.He said: “Both The Loren and Butterfield have received a ton of phone calls from churches, that want to be added to the programme and individual people themselves, trying to understand how the programme works.“The response was unexpected, but that means the idea was pertinent.”