MANCHESTER – Celebrations Catering, a familiar name in Milford, has corporate clients that includes Hitchiner Manufacturing, Airmar Technology and Chappell Tractor.

And thanks to longtime corporate clients and members of the community, Celebrations is seeing some well-needed relief in the midst of restaurants being limited to take-out and delivery.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Celebrations owner and president Fred Manheck wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. Celebrations was providing school lunches for several places of learning such as Nashua Catholic, the Derryfield School in Manchester and Bishop Brady high school in Concord just to name a few.

“When this happened, it was hard to find things for employees to do and to find business,” he said. “Nobody was really communicating. People were isolating. We went from having all of our schools in operation, to closing seven schools immediately, all on the same day.”

Fortunately, the community rallied around Manheck and his company. Many of the businesses that have been regular clients of Celebrations for many years began ordering food for their employees and to donate to various places.

“We’ve been getting a lot of help with different businesses ordering meals for their families and also donating to hospitals. Getinge, in Merrimack, is ordering for the next few weeks and Velcro Companies of Manchester and Somersworth, has been ordering a lot of family-sized meals for their employees. Each company set up a method of no contact delivery, which included a drive-up delivery of the food to Velcro staff.”

Manheck and his team started brainstorming ideas, trying to drum up more business with affordable meal alternatives for customers. That’s when the Bedford Rotary stepped in to offer some assistance.

“I’m a member of the rotary,” he said. “They’ve offered to deliver some meals to seniors. In response, Celebrations designed a low-cost menu option specifically for seniors or those needing single servings. And today, they’re donating 50 meals for five to healthcare workers at Catholic Medial Center as they get out of work in the afternoon.”

Celebrations has gained a great reputation over the past 25 years, especially with weddings, where they’ve fed groups as small as twenty-five all the way to two – three hundred guests. Inventor and philanthropist Dean Kamen, who regularly counts on Celebrations for all his catering needs throughout his many companies and non-profits (DEKA, First Robotics, ARMI), also has functions, ranging from small numbers to 1,000 people, depending on the event.

“For the other type of catering that we do, you really have to plan and order ahead because it’s a large number of people,” Manheck said. “Whereas this, with the numbers being smaller, it’s still a production but we can definitely make meals available with less notice.”

The summer, any caterers’ busiest season, is still up in the air but Manheck said he has already had many weddings postpone their day and move it to another time of year.

“Any reserved dates are being rescheduled,” he said. “If a client is looking to reschedule, it sort of depends if they’re out of town – those are typically rescheduling more quickly. Essentially, we are agreeing to reschedule their wedding reception any time in the next two years. It’s not like their wedding has been cancelled, it’s just been postponed.”

Manheck said Celebrations has already had many cancellations for May. For June, people are moving dates.

“I am concerned for the summer,” he said. “But we’ve even heard that at some of the venues where we cater, are offering weddings on mid-weekdays,” he said, “in order to give people the option of another day and some people are actually doing that.”

Celebrations is one of the happier stories, as Manheck said they went from having zero business right after the closures, to at least staying afloat.

“All our regular customers had to change the way that they operate,” he explained. “And they had to start doing more for their employees and then, they decided to start helping out the hospitals. All our schools have posted our menus online so we’re getting calls from places like Nashua Community College.”

The award-winning catering company is also supplying some meals to Nashua firefighters.

“They’re doing their part to support the local restaurants,” Manheck said. “They are ordering from us two days a week – which is pretty cool. I think people are just shifting to another way of life for a while.”