A PIZZA restaurant has been busy boiling up vats of bolognaise in a frantic bid to adjust to the post-lockdown economy.

Woodbox Pizzeria in Kemp Town, Brighton, closed soon after the Government, seeking to curb the spread of coronavirus, ordered restaurants to turn away eat-in diners last week.

But owner Neil Barclay said he and his chefs had rustled up a plan to keep the business ticking over.

They have prepared and frozen gallons of ragu and pasta sauce to deliver to hungry customers in Brighton.

At the same time, Neil has launched an initiative to help hard-working NHS staff.

When customers pay, they can donate to a pot of cash for NHS workers, who will get free food using the fund.

Neil said the news his restaurant had to close had come as a surprise.

He said: “We’ve normally got a buzzing sit-down restaurant.

“We just went into shock when we first heard.

“I suppose we knew it was coming because we’d seen what happened in Italy, Spain and Germany.

“But I don’t think we were expecting it to be announced – at first – without any sort of back-up plan.

“The next day, once the Government announced there would be some measures to help businesses, we still didn’t know much detail.

“When we got to the middle of the week and the shock had worn off we just decided to pick ourselves up and adapt.

“We realised we would have to do something very quickly if we wanted to continue.

“We carried on doing takeaway pizzas for a while, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that it wasn’t sustainable.

“The tide seemed to be turning on keeping the place open and people weren’t wanting to come and pick pizzas up.

“And like many of the brilliant small independent businesses in this city, we haven’t got huge cash reserves so we thought we would be better off looking after the staff and saving the cash reserves for when we reopen.”

That was when he hit upon a master plan.

Neil said: “My chef is Italian and he’s an extremely skilled cook.

“We spent about three days together cooking up absolute vats of bolognaise sauce, vegan bolognaise and vegetarian arrabiata – we’ve got a pretty large stock in at the moment.

“Freezing the sauces lets customers have them whenever they want.

“We quickly created an online shop and the demand has been increasing.

“It’s all happened so quickly: now the word is out, the orders are going up daily.

“I’ve had deliveries all over the city this morning.”

Neil said he was in the process of packing up food for NHS staff.

He said: “I live just round the corner from the hospital and they’re passing the word round and we’re putting packages together for them now.

“With our ‘pay it forward’ scheme, people can pay into a collective pot and then anyone from the NHS can essentially just pick some items and have them for free.”

l At The Argus, we are championing the work of traders during the coronavirus pandemic as part of our #BackingSussexBusiness campaign.

We are always interested to hear how the community is coming together in this crisis. If you know of a local business battling to do all it can in these tough times and/or offering support to the local community, please get in touch at laurie.churchman@theargus.co.uk and rose.lock@theargus.co.uk.

l Local newspapers across Newsquest are also joining forces to raise money for workers at the frontline of the healthcare crisis. Please donate whatever you can, and let us give a collective, united message to our NHS workers of our huge appreciation for their efforts.

You can get involved and support our campaign by sharing our appeal and telling us why you are thankful for the NHS #ThankYouNHS on social media using the link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-our-nhs-guardian-angels.