Random Café

Whilst Batman serves the city of Gotham as its Dark Knight, and Peter Parker swings through the streets of New York as its resident superhero, Watford needs its own superhero to help save the town from food waste.
As a result, Random Café has placed the call and needs you to create a Food Waste Superhero who can help us reduce food waste in the town.

Throughout August, we are looking for budding artists under the age of 11 to send in their ideas for a Food Waste Superhero. As well as a design, we’d like a Superhero name and a description of their Food Saving superpowers.

Once the competition has closed, the Random Café team will decide on the winning design and that winner will receive a Boredom Busting Hamper (basket not included) full of fabulous things, to keep you busy, donated by Asda in Watford and Random Café volunteers. As well as this amazing prize, the winner will also have their design become one of Random Café’s logos and featured on badges, bags and many other products.

The four best runners up will also win a prize, donated by Asda, Watford.

To enter, click here to download the entry form.

Alternatively, pop into our Pop Up Shop at Leavesden Green Community Hub on Tuesdays and Thursday between 10 am and 12 pm, or Saturdays between 10 am and 12 pm and 1 pm and 3pm and collect an entry form from one of our volunteers.

Entries can be posted to Random Café HQ (41 Highwood Avenue, Bushey, WD23 2AL) or handed in at our our Pop Up Shop at The Hub.

We look forward to seeing all the entries and having our own superhero to fight food waste alongside us. You can also help Random Café fight food waste by becoming a Friend of Random Café.

Click here to find out more information as well as the various benefits of being a Friend of Random Café.

For those who didn’t know, the 1st August 2020 was Random Café’s 3rd birthday, and despite not being able to celebrate properly, due to the social distancing restrictions, we had a celebration this year with cup cakes provided by Linda and the amazing team at The Kitchen in Croxley Green.

Since launching in 2017, we have managed to save over 44 tonnes of food from being thrown into landfill. As you know, this food may be past its best before, have a damaged box or a product that was over stocked by the store.

Since that first cafe on 16th September 2017 at Centrepoint Community Centre, we become a weekly café, initially at different venues across Watford before settling down at the Meriden Community Centre at the end of July 2019.
Due to the pandemic, we had to find a new home temporarily. We found that home at the Leavesden Green Community Hub where we have expanded our pop up shop to run three times a week during the period of lock down. As well as helping to feed over 1500 people during the pandemic, we have also helped support over 500 people with regular emergency food boxes, a lifeline for those shielding during the lock down period.

Looking forward, we are reviewing the government guidelines around social distancing and when it is safe to do so, we will have another birthday celebration. However, until then, we remain open three days a week at the Leavesden Green Community Hub. We would like to thank all our customers, volunteers and supporters for their help so far and we look forward to having a celebration with you all when it is safe to do so. Until then, come and see us at our pop up shop and help us #FeedBelliesNotBins
Whilst we didn’t ask for any birthday presents this year, we would love if you could become a Friend of Random Café. For as little as £1 per month, you can help us make Watford a more sustainable town.
For more information about the Friends of Random Café scheme, click here.

Random Café has been based at the Leavesden Green Community Hub for three months since we were unable to use our regular venue at the Meriden Community Centre due to the pandemic.

In the initial few weeks, we were facing some uncertainty. We were not sure if we would be able to continue our mini market during the pandemic as our regular venue had closed indefinitely. This meant we had lost the majority of our weekly income and the cancellation of our fundraising events. The future looked bleak for Random Café.

Without the continued support and donations, Random Café would not still be here.

The Random Café team want to give a huge thank you to all the Friends of Random Café who have continued to donate to us throughout this challenging period. As a result of your membership fees, we have been able to save 42 tonnes of food and have helped feed over 2000 people since lock down. We have since been able to successfully apply for funding from various organisations to supplement your support.  

However, we are in the process of finalising some very exciting plans and we need your help to continue with them. Becoming a friend of Random Café not only supports the work we do to reduce food waste and creating a community but allows you to receive a whole host of great benefits such as:

• Entry to our monthly prize draw
• Early bird notice for our events
• Discounted prices for our events

If you would like to become a friend of Random Café click here and thank you again for your continuing support.

On Saturday we were visited by Watford’s elected Mayor Peter Taylor. Peter has been supporting Random Café since our launch in 2017 and it was lovely to be able to show him what we have been doing at Leavesden Green Community Hub.

During the pandemic lock down Peter has visited many of the great organisations support those in isolation. There are many organisation within Watford who have change the services they provide or have formed a new group to help and support those that need extra help.

We have now saved over 40 tonnes of food from going to land fill. This figure has shot up in the lock down period, as we have been able to open more times in the week. Also our little van has been out collecting 7 days a week. When we first started, nearly 3 years ago we collected our main supply of food from Morrisons, on a Friday, with a few collections from the smaller Watford Tesco. We have added to this over the years and also have M&S, Lidl, Co-op and Aldi as regular collections, some of them 3 times a week.

There have been some one off collections too. We often get a call when a company has an over stock of goods. Anyone remember the houmous!! A local company had 177, 500 gm tubs of beetroot houmous. Social media, Whatsapp groups and neighbours were called upon to help distribute the tubs. We did it!!

Recently we received a call from a company in Luton who distribute Mexican Food. They had a large quantity of tortilla wraps, in 4 flavours and they had a short best before date.

Our electric van has limited range so we couldn’t risk running out of battery on the M1 so we took my car instead and managed to fit 42 boxes (2016 tortilla wraps) in it. As we couldn’t take all the wraps they had we then contacted our friends at Best Before Café in Letchworth. They are a fellow waste food café, and they were able to take lots of the wraps and distribute them to their customers.

In the time we have been running, we have made links with many groups and businesses, and during the lock down period we have formed more new friendships with organisations in the Watford area. While we love making connections with other organisations one of the most important connections we make is with you because without you we would be throwing away food that could be made into yummy meals.

With more of you visiting us and rescuing delicious food from going to landfill we can make sure we really do FEED BELLIES NOT BINS.