Leading Italian casual dining group Gusto has raised more than £50,000 for the Tim Bacon Foundation. The group’s 19 restaurants collected donations from diners across January.
Tim Bacon was the Co-Founder and Chairman of Living Ventures, the renowned restaurant group which established the Gusto brand in 2005 before its sale to Palatine Private Equity in 2014. Tim is widely credited as an inspirational innovator in the UK eating and drinking industry, helping to establish national brands such as Gusto, The Alchemist, The Botanist and Living Room. He sadly passed away in April 2016 after living with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and thereafter with advanced Melanoma, for many years.
Living Ventures established the Tim Bacon Foundation to support cancer charities and, specifically this year, the new Proton Beam Therapy Centre at The Christie Manchester. A true innovation, it will be the first of its kind in the UK.
Proton beam therapy is a specialist form of radiotherapy which can very precisely target certain cancers, increasing success rates and reducing side-effects. Its introduction to the UK will bring treatment closer to patients, mostly children with brain tumours, who are currently sent abroad for treatment. After years of planning, the multi-million pound project is entering its final stages and patients should be able to access the new treatment from August 2018.
Managing Director of Gusto, Sue Crimes, said:
I want to thank our customers so much for donating so generously!
Tim’s legacy lives on in everything we do at Gusto. Tim was pioneering, passionate and above all brave. We wanted to celebrate Tim’s contribution in establishing Gusto by asking our diners for a small donation.
It was an outstanding testament to his legacy that more than 50,000 Gusto diners across the UK each donated. I cannot thank everyone who has supported this enough; it has been so humbling to receive such goodwill from so many people!
Tim would have been thrilled to hear that the high-energy proton beam therapy centre run by the NHS will open at the Christie Hospital in Manchester this year, allowing patients in the UK to access an important treatment for life-threatening cancers.
Every penny counts and the money raised at Gusto will help make a huge difference to cancer patients. I am so grateful to the Gusto staff and customers for helping to raise such a significant amount ”