< Back to '11th September 2019' briefing
October 25, 2019
Complexity of community cafes.
Question: when is a café not a café? Answer: when it’s a community café. The basics of coffee, tea and cakes for sale may be as standard in cafes of all shapes and sizes but community cafes go much further. A while back, Senscot commissioned some research into what it takes to run a successful community café (we carried their online survey here) and the response was such that they’ve now produced a short briefing paper identifying a whole range of factors for any group to consider if they are thinking of setting one up.
Social Enterprise and Community Cafe Activity
Over the past few years, SEN members have increasingly referred to various forms of community café activity taking place within their social enterprise.
Given the enthusiasm across the SENs for involvement in community café activities, Senscot was keen to engage with local and thematic SENs to understand the role that community café activity plays within social enterprise.
With this paper, we aim to establish the core purposes these activities serve and gain insight into how community cafe activity is resourced, particularly with regards to the challenges of turning over a surplus.
This paper will be followed by a series of shorter publications with a focus on peer-to-peer learning around the running of a community cafe. Each publication will focus on a specific scenario, such as setting up a community café from scratch, building a kitchen or bringing in an external caterer to run a community café on your existing premises.
Click here to read the briefing.