Akroyd's Community Café

No one goes hungry

A community café with the aim of feeding those on low incomes with home cooked meals at affordable prices, in a location with a high unemployment rate. While offering meals at affordable prices I’ll offer support on getting back into work and to do this they’ll be a small space for customers to do job search, housing applications, apply for benefits and talk to someone in private for them to get the help and support they need.

To do this, I will lease with organisations such as

• Job centre plus

• Housing associations

• Homeless charities

• Food banks

• Schools/ collages

• Police

• Other community organisations

Once the café is up and running successfully I’d like to open one or two nights a week and provide a free meal for the homeless in the community who might otherwise not have a meal, in order to do this I’d ideal like to work in conjunction with “The Real Junk Food project”, who intercept food destined for landfall which is still within it use by date and they use this food to make meal on a “Pay As You Fell” basis and they also run a share house that sells this food to anyone and all they ask is the customers take as much as they can comfortably use and pay a donation towards this. They then use the money they generate from this is put back into the local community in education. To be able to offer this service I’d sell meals made from food provided by “The Real Junk Food Project” on a “Pay As You Fell” basis once a week and the profits from this will be used to buy the ingredients used to make the meals for the homeless in the community, while the homeless are eating they can use the other services available in the café to comfortably find the support they need.

Id also like to offer “Pay It Forward” meaning that when someone buys a hot drink for themselves they can also pay it forward by buying a drink, these drinks will be advertised and anyone that cannot necessarily afford to buy themselves a warm drink is able to have one.

Akroyd’s will also house a “community fridge” where families/individuals can choose items they need and replace them with something else they’d feel that someone else would need free of charge and to help keep the fridge stocked I’d like to talk to supermarkets, markets. Warehouses and other places that sell or distribute food that have surplice food that’ll go to waste if its not intercepted. Ideal this is where “The Real Junk Food Project” would come in as they already have goof connections with large organisations and businesses.

As well as offering all the above I’d like to offer work experience for those that want to gain a carer in the hospitality industry but haven’t got the opportunity to do this due to lack of qualifications or experience. This would ideally be a 26-week programme and by the end they’ll receive

• English and maths qualifications

• Food Hygiene qualifications

• Experience

• Employability skills, CV writing, interview tips

This would be offered free of charge.