18/09/2026
🚐⚡ A Huge Thank You to The Warehouse Café!
We were delighted to call to The Warehouse Café with our new Kia PV5 electric van to personally thank them for their fantastic support of Meals on Wheels Tralee & Killarney.
The Warehouse Café were one of the local Kerry businesses who came on board to help make the purchase of our new van possible, making an incredibly generous €1,000 contribution towards the remaining cost of the vehicle.
When we announced the arrival of the van in July, we promised that the businesses who supported its purchase would have their logos proudly displayed on it. We were delighted to return to The Warehouse Café with the completed van and show them their logo now travelling with us on our Meals on Wheels routes throughout Kerry.
The vast majority of the cost of our new van was funded by the Department of Rural and Community Development through the CLÁR Programme, and we remain extremely grateful for this significant investment in our service.
Once this funding was secured, however, there was still a remaining cost that had to be met. That gap was bridged by an amazing group of local businesses, whose generosity allowed us to complete the purchase and get the van on the road:
• McElligotts (KIA) Tralee
• Robert Kelly Paints
• Murphy Design & Print
• The Warehouse Café
• The Ross Hotel
• Killarney Tour & Taxi
• Kerry Coaches
• Munster Coving
Each of these businesses now has their logo proudly displayed on the van in recognition of the important part they played in making this project possible.
There were also very practical reasons why we selected the Kia PV5.
Our Meals on Wheels service has expanded significantly and now operates across Tralee, Killarney and surrounding rural areas. We needed an electric van with the battery capacity to comfortably undertake the distances involved in these routes.
We selected the Kia PV5 because it offered the largest battery range we could get to meet the needs of our service, giving us the confidence to cover Killarney and our rural routes while continuing our move from diesel to electric.
The importance of that range is already clear. In just the last 30 days, our new van has travelled 3,284.8 kilometres, supporting our service across Tralee, Killarney and rural Kerry.
Reliability was every bit as important to us as range. The van comes with a seven-year warranty, giving us additional reassurance for the years ahead.
For Meals on Wheels, reliable transport isn’t a luxury — it is essential.
Already in 2026, we have distributed 16,533 meals to 257 individual people. Our delivery operation runs Monday to Saturday, and our Meals on Wheels service never closes. The people who depend on us need their meals regardless of the time of year, and we simply cannot miss a delivery because a van breaks down.
This is also why having a three-van fleet — two fully electric vans and one diesel van — is so important. It gives us the resilience and backup needed to keep our meals moving if one of our vehicles is ever unavailable.
Moving towards electric vehicles isn’t simply about sustainability either. It is also about reducing the long-term running costs of our service. Every euro we can save on fuel and operating costs is money that can instead be reinvested directly into providing nutritious meals and supporting older people and vulnerable members of our community.
We are also hopeful of securing funding for solar panels at our premises in the future. If successful, this would allow us to charge our electric vans using renewable energy generated on site, reducing our running costs even further.
For today, however, our particular thanks go to The Warehouse Café for their very generous €1,000 contribution and for getting behind our service.
We are incredibly fortunate to have local businesses across Kerry willing to stand behind Meals on Wheels and help us continue developing a service that people can depend upon.
Thank you to The Warehouse Café and to every business and organisation that helped us get this van on the road. 🚐⚡
