Dublin restaurant gives takings to homeless

Hundreds of people turned up to eat at a Dublin restaurant that was giving its day’s taking to homelessness.

Wishbone restaurant donated all of its takings yesterday to Focus Ireland and Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH). At one stage it got so busy that staff were forced to turn away potential diners.

“It’s doing really well I’d say we’ve turned away about 150 people already,” said owner James Stimpson.

He said he would have loved to have sat every single customer but the tables filled up too fast.

“I would sit you on the roof if my insurance would allow it, but it’s been mad, it’s a feel-good factor as well,” said James.

“We have 65 sittings and I’d say we’ve flipped it twice already and then we’ll do another sitting and then we have to close for an hour or two just to prep for the evening time and then tonight is really, really busy as well,” he said yesterday afternoon.

“Hopefully, now we’ll get a nice few bob together.”

James, who opened the restaurant just over a year ago, hoped to have raised €6,000 yesterday as Monday is generally a busy day for his business.

Queues at Dublin's Wishbone restaurant giving all its takings to homelessness today

“Monday is a really good day and Sunday would be our quietest day,” he said. “I have a figure in my head that I would love to hit. I’d love to hit maybe €6,000.

“We’re paying our staff, we cover the food, so everything is going to charity. If the takings are seven grand, seven grand is going to charity.”

Adrian Cummins, CEO of the Restaurant Association of Ireland (RAI) said that December is the busiest month of the year for the restaurants and that they often need to rely on the month’s takings to cover the months ahead.

However, James described it as a “nice thing to do”.

“Look, it’s our first year in business and we’ve done really well,” he said. “I’m not saying we’ve made a lot of money but we have done really well.

“Our first year in business was in October and we did a day of free chicken wings and there was a queue around the corner and we gave out 450 portions of wings.

“Yeah, December is the busiest time for us but it’s nice to do it, it really is and we can afford to do it.”

The idea came to him after walking past groups of homeless people every morning and evening on his way to and from work.

He said: “I’m from Malahide so I always get the Dart to Pearse [Station] and I walk up so at the very start I was doing days and nights so I’d walk up in the morning and walk down in the night so it was just really, really sad the reality, it was just horrible seeing everyone out in the freezing cold.”

After the success of yesterday’s event, he now plans to host one such day every quarter for different charities.

“This year I wanted to do something for the homeless,” said James. “The next one we’re going to is for maybe a children’s hospital, then maybe do something for cancer research and then maybe for suicide.”

The busy restaurant, which is located just off ’s Harcourt St and has its own secret sauces for chicken wings as created by James, is planning four more restaurants around the country as well as franchises.