We need your help to extend our Caring Community

We need your help to extend our Caring Community

Since founding Rockwood in 2014, Pauline and I have built an award-winning restaurant that we are both proud of. 

We were awarded Liverpool City Region’s Restaurant of the Year as Covid19 struck and even though we like every other business have had our challenges, Covid19 has not taken the shine off winning this prestigious award. In fact, it presented us with a great opportunity to take stock and reflect on how far we have come and grown as a Restaurant and it has given us the space and time to get more than our creative culinary juices flowing.

With that in mind, we are about to literally take Rockwood up a level and launch Odyssey@Rockwood, which will be a private dining and micro wedding experience…upstairs. It’s been a concept that we have had on the back burner for quite a while now and lockdown provided us with the perfect opportunity to bring that concept to life. Just as Pauline and I have brought this grand old building back to life. 

We believe that now is the time to extend ourselves into our community as our community has extended itself to help one another during the past 12 months. We want Rockwood and our up-and-coming Odyssey@Rockwood to go even further, by becoming a Restaurant that not only caters to your special occasions and events but a business that will build a firm Foundation in our caring community. 

With this in mind, we have decided to invest even more than we already have in our business and community by establishing Rockwood Foundation Community Cookery School, Events & Hire. Since becoming a Chef and launching Rockwood I have yearned to be able to share my love and passion for food, its design, presentation and flavours to anyone who wanted to learn the basics, develop their skills, explore what works well to being able to pair the visual aesthetics of food with our other senses of touch, taste and smell, creating the anticipation of what’s to come with each course.

Rockwood Foundation Community Cookery School, Events & Hire will be founded in another local property and will provide:

• Cookery Club for adults
• Cookery Club for Teens
• Community Cookery School
• Over 50’s Caring Community Afternoon Tea 
• Pop up community restaurant run by Rockwood Foundation
• Independent Living Cookery lessons
• Cookery Demonstrations
• Pop up street food events
• Opportunities to explore the hospitality industry as a meaningful, fulfilling career pathway
• A monthly Death Café, a place to explore the taboos of death and dying over tea, coffee and cake
• Food art and design presentation events
• Wedding Menu Planning
• Events Planning
• Knife skills
• Food costings
• Network clubs
• Equipment Hire
• Advice & Suppliers

We have seen locally and globally the impact of lockdown on businesses and banks, funding streams dry up and businesses falter. However, that is not the Rockwood way, we have continued to invest in our business behind the closed shutters, planning to re-open with more, not less of ourselves and our business. 

With this in mind, we need your help to help get us to the final stage of being able to launch Rockwood Foundation Community Cookery School, Events & Hire. We need to raise the final £105,000

For every £1.00 raised, we will be adding 60p, for every £10.00 we will contribute £6.00, for every £100.00 Rockwood will contribute £60, that’s how serious we are about launching this Foundation. We also want to provide people with the opportunity to get a return on their caring by offering the following, which we hope will inspire people to give more to get more back when you donate the following amounts:

• £75 will provide you with an exquisite Wine Tasting & Canape Evening with House of Townsend (price per person)
• £100 will provide a Rockwood Luxury Afternoon Tea & A Glass of Pink Fizz for Two
• £150 will provide a Rockwood Summer 6 Course Gourmet Tasting Menu, paired with a glass of Champagne on arrival and Wine to accompany the Menu (price per person)
• £200 will provide two people with the opportunity to have a two-hour private cookery lesson with award winning Chef Christopher John, which will include knife skills, food design, art, presentation and flavours
• £275 will provide two people with the opportunity to have a two-hour private Masterclass with award winning Chef Christopher John, which will include knife skills, food design, art, presentation and flavours PLUS a 3-course meal from the A La Carte menu (Wednesday to Thursday) ( No Drinks Included)

We hope that you will come with us on our journey and make the next stage of our vision a reality, housed and firmly founded in our caring community. Whatever you give, know that you are helping us to build Rockwood Foundation Community Cookery School, Events & Hire in a community that we call home and, in a community, where we know we can make a difference to so many lives because what Covid19 has reinforced, we are indeed a caring community. 

Pauline and I want to say thank you to all of you who have supported us, believed in us, our vision and who have helped us get this far. It’s been amazing and we look forward to reopening Rockwood, launching Odyssey@Rockwood and building, with the help of crowdfunding the shortfall to get it open, Rockwood Foundation Community Cookery School, Events & Hire.

Chef Christopher John and Pauline