If you follow my Instagram or Facebook feed you will hopefully have seen that I am currently working with Re-F-use Durham on their new café in Chester-Le-Street.
I wanted to tell you a little bit more about this unusual café and share some 'before' pictures and some of my ideas for the interior to help you follow along with this great project.
Re-F-use, why it started
In early 2015 Nikki Dravers and Mim Skinner began to feel passionate about the amount of food that is wasted; did you know that we throw away 1.3 billion tons of food every year worldwide - a third of all the food produced. What a shocking waste when so many hundreds of millions of people don't have enough.
So they started Re-F-use, supported by The Real Junk Food Project, a nation wide network of cafes and organisations, hoping to educate and eventually stop this waste. Since then Nikki, Mim and their host of helpers have served nearly 6000 meals and saved about 18,000kg of perfectly good food from just going to land fill!
But, since they eventually want to put themselves out of a job, they decided to start a café! This way they can gather more food and serve more delicious meals. Ultimately they want to educate further, getting the message out there that this is not good enough and that they refuse to be part of that wasteful system.
So that's what they're doing! They've got a great venue with bags of space for ideas to grow and we're working together to design a great café. The food that will be served will be delicious, healthy and nourishing and will all be charged by a 'pay as you feel' method (more about that next time!)
The Re-F-use Cafe
The scheme is going to really reflect the ethos of the café, by embracing reclaimed and new, repurposing the old and breathing life into the unloved. The colour scheme will be eclectic and energising using bold tones of yellow, plum, teal and brick red.
Most of the furniture will be donated or locally sourced while the kitchen will gleam with fresh white tiles and stainless steel. The lighting will of course be energy saving and we're currently investigating some of the most up-to-date kitchen materials that are made from recyclables like glass.
I can't wait to see how this project develops, but I especially can't wait to take the family there in a few months to share in some tasty food to celebrate the opening! I'll bring you some more pictures soon so watch this space!
I refuse to be part of this wasteful food system, do you?!