Aaron had not left his bedroom in about two months after his business collapsed.
"I was pretty desperate for a long time. I wasn’t eating regularly or well.
"For a while I felt that there is always people worse off.
"It can be difficult to accept that it is time you do need help with these things.
"I was past the crisis point and every form of help seemed a million miles away."
That was when Aaron reached out to The Bowling Club to receive a free meal.
The Caversham-based social restaurant recently expanded its service delivering free meals to the community.
Aaron said contact with the restaurant helped him "turn a corner" and get into a better place.
He found it inspiring that there were people doing good in the community when the world around him seemed quite dark.
"I think I’m not overstating it when I say what these guys are doing is lifesaving because looking backwards, even though it’s only a couple of weeks ago, I was on that path.
"Which is a real hard thing to say actually.
"They’ve changed that direction for me which has been massive."
The first food bag arrived on his birthday and he was not expecting it.
"It was like a light switch went on and it felt like I was coming back to life.
"It was hugely powerful and it had me thinking this is temporary and there is a way out of this."
His objective was now to get back on his feet and repay the help he received.
"If I was in a room of people that were thinking about sponsoring one meal or 100 meals I would say this project is in Dunedin and it is helping people now every day.
"I don’t think any enterprise could do better than having their name attached to it."
The Bowling Club delivers between 650 and 800 frozen meals every week to those in need.
Two weeks ago it started delivering 100 meals each to community organisations The Corstorphine Community Hub and The Valley Project.
The Valley Project places the meals in a freezer to be picked up by members in the community and the hub includes them in its parcels it distributes to families in need on Fridays on its food share day.
The hub’s chairwoman, Mama Taana, said it distributed between 37 and 50 parcels to families that had about five members every week.
Ms Taana said this winter had been worse and a lot more families were asking for more.
The Bowling Club co-owners Jackie Bannon and Liam Arthur said it had become necessary to work with community organisations.
Ms Bannon said the restaurant was delivering about 100 bags, each with three meals in it every week, but that was still not enough.
The Bowling Club had reached its limit of meals it could supply with the resources it had presently, with a list for food bags that was growing.
"Even what we’re doing right now is not super sustainable."
It took about $3000 per week to produce the meals presently.
To increase production, Ms Bannon and Mr Arthur were calling on businesses to pitch in and make it a community effort to make the frozen meals.
"We need collective action to solve this problem.
"If we got 100 businesses to give us $50 per month we would be sweet.
"I know we would just be able to dive into this programme and supply more kai."
