Always on
This project successfully funded on 18th March 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
Building a new community hub at Random Cafe
Watford, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Seeking funds to finish building a new space for our community to learn, socialise & help us reduce food waste in Watford.
What is Random Café?
Random Café is a community organisation fighting food waste in Watford. We collect food from supermarkets and food producers that would otherwise be thrown away. Food is either nearing expiry, in damaged packaging or surplus - but all perfectly edible! We serve food in our community café at affordable prices, way below the high street average. Any food not used in our café is offered on a ‘pay as you feel’ basis in our shop. We also run a community garden growing produce for the café and for purchase by visitors.
Since 2017, we’ve saved 127 tonnes of perfectly good food from landfill.
What’s special about ‘Random’?
We’re affectionately known as ‘Random’ to our regulars. They love visiting us for the warm welcome they receive. Our café is a popular meeting place for the community (like the local cycling group shown above) and a place where families can bring the kids for an affordable treat.
We run on a shoestring budget. We pay a peppercorn rent and keep our running costs low. We receive a very small number of grants and are reliant on the money we make in the café and shop, as well as any fundraising events to help cover our costs.
We have a single member of paid staff who is supported by volunteer power! Around 30 volunteers work in our cafe, shop, garden, workshops and behind the scenes to keep Random Cafe running. We aim to be as inclusive as possible when offering volunteering opportunities. We have volunteers of all ages and we work with several neurodiverse volunteers. We’re proud that some of our younger volunteers have gone onto full time employment having gained skills and experience at Random.
Our achievements so far
Since we started 9 years ago, we’ve achieved a lot – particularly for such a small organisation. We have:
- Moved from temporary pop-up locations to a permanent base
- Transformed a neglected, overgrown plot into a thriving community garden
- Renovated our site to make it more accessible and sustainable, with wheelchair accessible paths and energy-saving solar panels
- Refurbished workshops for our volunteers to create upcycled goods for us to sell
- Raised funds to move our cafe from a small portacabin into a new purpose-built space - allowing us to welcome more customers and save even more food from landfill
- Brought the community together by hosting small, regular events such as our monthly book group and weekly crafternoon
- Partnered with local groups to stage family fun days and sustainability events
Check out this video of last year's Big Green Day - a free community event held in the Random Cafe gardens.
What's next for Random Cafe?
We have become an established and treasured part of our community, but we realised there’s more we can do to bring the community together!
Till now, we have only been able to use our existing building for community events up to two days a week, when the cafe is closed. We are installing a second building, next door to the cafe. This building will be a dedicated community space, open up to six days a week.
Having consulted with our regulars we are planning to use the building in the following ways:
- To run our own workshops, courses and community events – e.g. green gardening, upcycling, sustainable art
- For other groups or individuals to host their own events e.g. coffee mornings, NCT groups, yoga classes
- As a low-cost hire space for small businesses and community groups e.g. a local community art project, the local residents’ association
- As a space for us to run fundraising events to help us generate income – using our own space will mean we can make more from each event.
Why are we crowdfunding?
Late last year, we secured a grant from the local council to help us get started with the build - if you've been to the cafe recently you'll have seen that building is already underway! Although the grant covers getting the basic structure built and secure, the money we’ve raised so far doesn’t quite cover all of the costs. We have £4,500 to go. We now need to raise the remaining money to make sure we can open up the building for our community.
Our crowd has helped us get this far – it’s thanks to you all that we were able to build the new cafe in 2023 and get our roof fixed in 2024. We know that our ‘Random’ friends and supporters want to see this new building opening up – you’ve already given us some great ideas for how we could use it. We really hope we can count on your support to get us over this final hurdle!
How we’ll spend the money raised
The building is being built to the same specifications as our current cafe and will sit alongside, giving easy access to the cafe. This is the designer's view of what it will look like:
Money will be spent on building costs, which total £46,000.
The grant we've secured as well as offline funding covers £41,500 and we are crowdfunding for the remaining £4,500.
How else could the building be used?
When we asked our regulars how they would want us to use the space, these are just a few of the ideas they came up with – by supporting us today you could help make these a reality!
Cooking demonstrations”
“IT courses”
“Social activities that don’t cost the earth”
“Fitness group”
“Upcycling”
How you can help
There are three simple ways to get involved and support our project:
1. Make a donation
Every pledge gets us closer to our goal. By making a donation early in our campaign, you’re helping to motivate others to give, so please, don’t delay!
2. Spread the word
Please help the Random crowd grow by sharing our project with friends, family and your wider network. The more people we reach, the more likely we are to succeed.
3. Volunteer with us
We are always looking for volunteers. At the moment, we particularly need volunteers aged 18+ to work in our cafe on weekdays, we could really do with some support with our social media and we need people who can help run fundraising events. If you’d like to get involved, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch through the ‘Contact’ section using the subject "I want to volunteer my time or expertise" on our project page.
Thank you SO MUCH for your support. It means the world to us. We really hope you'll come to visit our new community hub soon!
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made