Cateys 2026: Special Award – Mary-Ellen McTague

The winner of the Special Award has harnessed the power of a nutritious meal to provide moments of respite to families and individuals facing difficulties.

Mary-Ellen McTague provides hope to those struggling in her community through the distribution of meals created by chefs and prepared by volunteers.

She established Eat Well MCR during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the world returned to normal she recognised an enduring need and continued to build a network that now delivers thousands of meals a month.

Describing her charity’s work, McTague said: “The food we provide goes beyond satiating hunger, it’s about an emotional lift – that moment of relief or relaxation where you can switch off from whatever’s going on at that time in your life.

“That’s what the hospitality industry does for its customers and it’s what we hope to do for people living with some very challenging circumstances.”

Since its launch the charity has served more than 164,000 meals and now distributes almost 2,500 a month to those in need. Recipients include families living in temporary accommodation, women taking refuge in sheltered accommodation and families experiencing food poverty and inequality. To achieve this McTague has brought together a network of hospitality professionals to lead and support volunteers as they batch cook and distribute meals.

As well as supporting people year-round with nutritious meals, the charity has organised special events with its partners to provide further respite to families in need. These have included a free pop-up event where independent traders served 600 meals during the school summer holiday, the provision of 60 family-friendly picnics to a local food bank, and the distribution of more than 1,000 Christmas dinners to people in need. Eat Well MCR has also sent 24 looked-after young people to Food Sorcery in Didsbury, where they learned to make a curry and naan bread from scratch.

The impact of the charity’s work can be seen in the testimonials of those it has worked with. Ruth Ibegbuna, founder of Rekindle supplementary school, said: “The beautifully crafted, tasty meals we receive each week from Eat Well MCR feed our young people and enable us to know that they’ve received at least one hot, tasty, nutritious meal that day. It has been an absolute lifeline and taken any stigma out of ‘free meals’.”

A teacher at a Manchester primary school, to which the charity provided meals for parents to collect and take home, said: “The families that have had the meals today are just made up. One of the mums had tears in her eyes – this will really help her and her girls.”

Through her work McTague has created countless moments of respite and relief for families facing a daily struggle to make ends meet. And, remarkably, she has achieved all this while also establishing her restaurant, Pip, within Manchester’s Treehouse hotel.

The judges

The Caterer editorial team, with nominations from all the Cateys judging panels.