Rebuilding The Platform Cafe Together

Aim

Help our community cafe recover from the Covid-19 crisis

Our goal:

Here at The Platform Cafe, we're fundraising again to support our project during the Covid-19 pandemic. With the support of our community, our successful crowdfunding campaign last year raised over £17,000 - thank you! This time around, at the start of 2021, we want to raise £6,000 to help improve our premises and develop our online trading. 

Who are we?

Located in the heart of Loughborough Junction, South London, The Platform Cafe has been operating since 2017, serving vegetarian cooking to our local community, focusing on wellbeing and sustainability. We support people to access healthy and nutritious food and a welcome space to feel at home. 

Since the start of the pandemic, we have been supporting members of our community who've been experiencing hardship due to the coronavirus. To date, we've provided over 2000 free meals, as well as regular check-ins through doorstep chats, phone calls and socially-distanced meet-ups. We coordinated a team of dedicated volunteers to deliver meals whilst people were shielding or isolating, and supported residents to leave their homes for a health-giving walk to collect their meals when it felt safe to do so. We delivered free lunches to NHS mortuary workers all summer and worked with groups including the Grove Adventure Playground, Carers4Carers and Max Roach Community centre to feed households in need.

Now, we want to make some simple changes to improve our services and help develop our trading.

What will we spend it on?

We want to build a kiosk at the side of the building to serve takeaways safely. We will adapt our outside space and install a canopy so that customers can comfortably eat outdoors, protected from the elements. These measures will help make our premises more Covid-secure and allow us to use the main room for much-needed community events whilst continuing to trade. 

We will develop our online trading so that we can offer local deliveries and takeaways.

We plan to use the remaining funds to improve our kitchen facilities so that we can continue our necessary work offering both free and paid meals to the community.

How can you benefit?

We are offering a limited number of rewards for discounted meals. If you're a regular, it means that by supporting us, you can actually save money on your lunches. Pledge either £25 or £50 and in return receive a pass for five or ten lunches at the value of £5 a lunch (usually £6). As part of the Mayor of London's Back to Business scheme, we are eligible to receive match-funding for up to £5,000, so it's mutually beneficial! For any questions, please email [email protected].

If you'd like to support us, but don't want or need the meal pass, we'd still be incredibly grateful for a donation.

We look forward to welcoming you to the space soon and thank you for supporting us.

Video created by London-based independent film producer: @ohmgvideo http://www.ohmgvideo.com/ 

Music: Try - R.LUM.R 

Support by RFM - NCM: https://youtu.be/BnFxQerDnSU

This project successfully funded on 12th April 2021