Roccoco uses from the Food Redistribution Centre to enhance its training offering. The Coffee Lounger and Bakery, run by Brothers of Charity Services, offers volunteering opportunities for adults with learning disabilities to develop catering and customer service skills, earn qualifications, and meet new people.

It has a broad community-focussed offering beyond the training opportunities, too, offering talking tables and chatty café schemes for older people and people living with dementia, and a pay-it-forward food scheme.

“We’ve been running Roccoco Coffee Lounge & Bakery since 2014. It has a number of offerings beyond just the community café,” says Rob Owen, Food Retail Manager.

“We joined FareShare in early 2023 to help to stop food waste, keep our prices affordable, and receive extra items to pass on to our community. Membership has also allowed us to expand the ingredients our service users can work with, as we offer volunteering opportunities for adults with learning disabilities to develop catering and customer service skills, earn qualifications, and meet new people.

“We receive a range of fruit, vegetables and meat. If we have surplus or are unable to use items in our menu, we give this to our customers for free. We also have a pay-it-forward scheme for people to get free meals if they need. For example, over Christmas, when we had a man experiencing homeless who came to us every day, we could feed him and support him.

“Being members has also connected with other opportunities too. As well as the food, we receive a lot of personal hygiene products which allows us to make up dignity boxes for our users. And we’ve received donations of a new fridge and freezer and other kitchen equipment via Recycling Lives’ partners like The Cumberland. The support we receive from Naomi is second-to-none.”