Doncaster pub licensee going above and beyond to help villagers during pandemic

Over the past year, White Hart licensee Rita Cox has gone above and beyond in supporting her local community in Wadworth.

The White Hart is the only pub in a village of mainly senior citizens, so she was determined to keep spirits up and continue to provide hot food during lockdown. Together a team of just three cooked and personally delivered 400 hot home-made meals a week within a four-mile radius of the pub.

When delivering to shielding customers, the team also check to see they are okay and ensure they have the pub telephone number should they need any essentials like bread and eggs, which the pub has in stock.

With the village shop opposite the pub, Rita also buys basic items for shielding customers and delivers them with their meals. Seeing the pub’s role as more of a community service than a profit-making venture, the OAPs are offered a choice of six hearty dishes charged at just £5 a head with additional options for other customers.

With no Meals on Wheels available, the council recognised the value of this service and asked if the pub could deliver further afield.

However, with staff furloughed due to people in their homes shielding, this wasn’t possible. Instead they offered a collection service for those further afield phoning in with orders.

Rita has only taken three days off in the last year, one of which was Christmas Day. Although she’s found it challenging, she feels a sense of achievement that she has given back to the community whose pub she has run for the last 35 years.

To lift spirits further, The White Hart ran a children’s colouring competition with pictures displayed in the pub window.

Determined that residents have things to look forward to, this month Rita’s decided to do cook a Valentine’s Day three course meal delivered with a bottle of prosecco.

A report about the important and positive role pubs play in communities and on people’s wellbeing, which singled out the White Hart, was produced by Loughborough University.

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