A non-profit community café will open in Barton Hill where lunch will be served on a ‘pay-what-you-can-afford’ basis. The long awaited Eatwell café, located in the reception area of Wellspring Settlement at the Ducie Road site, comes after the closure of the previous café following the first lockdown in 2020.
The café will be run by the new community engagement and a team of volunteers, initially they will be serving hot meals on Tuesdays but hope to gradually expand their opening hours. The new Eatwell community café forms part of the Settlement’s response to the cost of living crisis and from October it will be one of the councils ‘warm spaces’, giving people somewhere to sit in the warm, socialise and charge their phones during the winter months.
After running a coffee morning with older residents, community engagement workers discovered that the area lacked a warm space where people could socialise that was affordable. “If you go to a café on Church Road you have to pay up to £3 or £4 for a tea or coffee and then that becomes a space that a large part of the community just can’t use,” explained Community worker, Beth Hill.
