Feed Bellies Not Bins

Really sorry but there will be no Café this Saturday, 20th July. We will be back to normal next week at the Meriden.

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

On 29th June Random Café join the first Holywell Festival at King George V Park. The weather was fantastic, very hot, sunny and dry. We went along to do a stall offering pay as you feel refreshments. Lots of our volunteers gave up their afternoon to provide cold drinks, tea, coffee, cakes and crisps. We also had chocolate but, as you can imagine, it really didn’t like the weather.

We were treated to live music with a variety of local bands. The  music gave the day a really happy, holiday atmosphere.

Random Café were just one of the places you could get food at the Holywell Festival. There was a wide selection from falafel wraps to ice cream to jacket potatoes.

One of the stalls that really caught our eye was Cycling without Age. This is a fantastic group of volunteers that help older people across Watford experience the outdoors and nature close-up with their fabulous trishaw cycling scheme. The trishaws are battery assisted and Nici and Myself went for a ride round King George V park. It was a great experience and such a great project. The rides are free with the trishaws currently based at Watford Cycle Hub. You can find Watford Cycle Hub next to the Holywell Community Centre.

 Thank you to everyone who visited our stall to chat to us we really enjoyed our afternoon and hope to join everyone again next year.

A huge congratulations to all the organisers for a successful first Festival and a fun afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Join the Random team on a relaxing afternoon cruising down The Grand Union Canal. We have organised our first Random outing on this lovely canal boat. There will be tea, coffee, soft drinks and a buffet included with each ticket. Tickets are already going fast. To book your place email randomcafeuk@gmail.com for more information.

Being a supporting member of Random Café allows early bird access to all Random events. To see our membership options and to join pop over to our membership page Random Membership Members can also receive up to 50% off event tickets and invites to exclusive members only events.

Every pound donated to Random Café helps us save more food from going to landfill. Our monthly membership donations are real lifeline, helping us to continue to Feed Bellies Not Bins.

This month we have a great prize for you to win.

• 4 tickets to Hollywood Bowl in the Intu centre.
• 4 tickets for the Vue Cinema in Garston.
• A family (for 4) ticket to Farmyard Funworld at the Lincolnsfield Centre
• And some yummy chocolate treats to enjoy.

You could be in with a chance of winning. All you have to do is become a supporting member of Random Café. Just click the links on our membership page. 💚

This Saturday we are supporting our local football heroes by decorating our café yellow, black and red. Help us “paint the town yellow” by wearing yellow, red or black to the café at The Barn this Saturday. We’ll have colourful cupcakes, jellies and much more.

One of our regular venues is The Meriden Community Centre in the heart of The Meriden Ward of Watford. We have been holding our Cafés here for over a year and have got to know quite a few of the local residents. We were recently asked by the Meriden Residents Committee if we would like to join in with their Easter Community Event to be held as part of the Great British Spring Clean.

We love connecting with other community groups so, of course we said yes. We normally hold our café in the smaller flexi-space hall but for this event we were in the larger hall. With extra tables and people to cater for we made extra floral table decorations and expanded our menu.

The Residents Committee collected a large number of bags full of litter making the area around the centre looked lovely in the sunshine. Once they’d all finished cleaning up they joined us in the hall for veggie bean chilli, pasta bake and vegetable soup. We had a record amount of people for our Saturday café with 58 joining us.

Our bakers added an Easter touch to the sweet treats on offer.

The Residents committee had organised an Easter bonnet competition – there were some beautiful creative bonnets with the judge finding it very difficult to choose a winner. At the end of the café all the children received a chocolate Easter egg each which made a lot of little faces smile. It was a very busy and fun event and we hope to hold more joint events throughout the year.

Why ‘Random’ Café? Where does the food come from and why? How much should I pay?

I’m hoping I can answer some of these questions here.

Why ‘Random’ Café?

The idea for a waste food café came from a group of friends in Watford who wanted to make a difference both socially, and environmentally for a more sustainable future. We all met through Reason Coffee shop and, from the start had similar views of the world. Once I started researching food waste and what we could do, it was very apparent there is a huge food waste problem globally not just locally. Over a third of all food produced is thrown away for a variety of reasons. Most common is cosmetic!! Think how we would feel if someone called us ugly. A potato is a potato no matter what it looks like. It still mashes, roasts and makes chips. I realised from the start that we would get an eclectic mix of ingredients and produce and when I explained this to my youngest daughter she said “so its going to be really Random”. Random Café was born.

Where does the food come from?

We get food from anywhere that sells or produces food. We currently intercept food from Morrisons, Co-op and Tesco. We also collect food from a local bakery, a local catering company and local food banks. We are now looking at new suppliers and links to intercept and save even more food from going to landfill.

Why? There are too many reasons to list but I will cover the top ones.

Best before dates!! Not to be confused with a ‘use by date’. The crazy world of putting a date on packaging to tell us when the food will not be at its best. 

“The best before date, sometimes shown as BBE (best before end), is about quality and not safety. The food will be safe to eat after this date but may not be at its best. Its flavour and texture might not be as good.” (food.gov.uk)

This means up to this date the food will be the best it can be. We get kilos and kilos of food each week because of best before dates. I’m sure we all can tell which apple is good to eat. 

Damaged packaging!! Some packaging gets knocked about and gets dented or ripped.  We get a lot of dented tins, broken boxes of cereal, unstuck bags of sugar and lots and lots of tea. The inner packaging is often untouched and is still keeping the contents safe.

Over stock or Promotions/Seasonal!! This sounds like three different reasons but all comes down to one – over-ordering or producing. Think of a celebration – Easter, Christmas or Fathers’ day. Supermarkets have to stock enough products to cover the demand of the customer. This is difficult to predict, even more so during seasonal shopping. For example we intercepted lots of these lovely ice cream wafers. A change in the weather meant not many people were thinking about ice cream so these are then in the way. Supermarkets look huge but the warehouse is not as big as you would think (I’ve had a sneaky peek at a few in my time with Random Café.) They want surplus stock out of the way. We can save this surplus and bring it to you either as part of our cafe or in our shop.

How much should I pay?

As a member of The Real Junk Food Project, http://www.trjfp.com, and with signed agreements with the supermarkets, we cannot charge for the food we collect. We can only offer it for a donation and because of this we don’t have prices for any of the intercepted food. We offer everything at our café on a pay as you feel basis. I know this can be very confusing to anyone who has not come across something like this before.  The idea is to pay in time, money or skills – putting a value on the food and the people. Food is valuable – a lot has happened to bring the produce to the supermarket in the first place. Water, energy, time all have a cost. People have put in time and effort. Farmers getting up early to tend to their crops, grocers collecting and displaying their goods to look the best that they can and keep them as fresh as possible and for us the volunteers who are the life force of Random Café.

Random Café is run completely on volunteers giving their time and skills for free. This may seem like we have no overheads, I wish this were the case.  There is so much going on behind the scenes to bring you the café you see on a Saturday.

When you visit Random Café, or one of the 120+ Junk food project cafes around the country, you are paying for the time of everyone involved. You are also helping to pay for any extra ingredients needed (e.g stock cubes, eggs, milk), energy to cook the food, vehicle costs to collect all the produce and transport it to venues, admin costs for leaflets and accounting etc, insurances for the volunteers and customers safety and venue hire to name but a few. When you add all these costs together you have more of an idea of what it costs to bring Random Café to all.

We love running the cafe and we’re always happy to see new faces aswell as welcome our regular customers and we look forward to seeing you soon at one of our upcoming Cafés 💚

Bring a bag, Bring a friend, Bring a Smile!