Almanac Cafe - One with Nature

Aim

Help us build Almanac, a beautiful new cafe for Plymouth featuring fresh locally grown foods to guide you on adventures through the seasons

Almanac, your guide to the seasons 

Walk through our doors, hidden away on Batter Street on Plymouth’s Barbican, but you know where to find us. Come up and take a seat at our long table - with old friends or with new friends you are yet to meet, or pick a quieter table to work, or meet, or just be. Leave your cares behind, relax, welcome to our piece of the countryside in the city. Look over our menu - you find simple dishes made from foods picked freshly from fields near here, carefully prepared with organic, sustainable low waste ingredients from Jar. Food that is good for the planet and the soul. Fresh and vibrant, choose a plate or choose many, try new things, old favourites. Food that changes through the year, share what we are growing, take in the colours, the tastes. Let us guide you through the seasons. We are Almanac.

In 2019 Helen and Caroline, the founders of Jar Zero Waste, met Sean of Good Earth Growers. Sharing a love of low waste, light touch sustainable living and organic food, we started to work together during Covid to bring beautiful organic vegetables from Sean’s Good Earth Growers at St Mellion into Jar, in Plymouth, helping local food to be enjoyed where it is lovingly grown. Now we want to do more… We have been busy working on a beautiful space above Jar Zero Waste shop at 32 Batter Street, where we want to make a green space in our city. We want to produce locally grown, low waste food for our community, and we would love for you to join us as our new adventure begins.

Our space isn’t just about food. We will have room to seat around 50 in two different spaces, communal and quieter spaces, so you will be able to meet friends and stay on and work if you like. We are also building two workshop spaces upstairs where we hope to host classes in the near future. Classes to stretch the mind and body, come and relax with us.

How you can help  

We have a beautiful space and after a lot of work making it water tight and lovingly repairing 200 year old floorboards to bring it back into use, we have all of the basics needed to serve coffees, lovely locally baked cakes and snacks. Now we would like to build a kitchen capable of feeding many and which can also be used as a teaching space. 

As with everything we do sustainability is at the heart of it all, so everything at Almanac will be powered 100% by electricity from renewable providers from the start. We would like to buy ovens, a dishwasher and fridges to allow us to grow our basic kitchen space. We would like to install ventilation to allow us to cook a variety of foods in the future, and we would love your support if you are able. We need your help to access match funding from Plymouth City Council’s Development Fund - if we raise half of our target we may be offered match funding for the other half. You can help us by buying a meal in advance or joining us as a founder member. This would give us the best start to make something new and beautiful in our city.

This project successfully funded on 6th April 2023