Today Café 16 in Newcastle Cathedral celebrates its first full year of operation.
In that time, as well as serving breakfast, lunch and cake to the general public, we have catered afternoon teas, conferences, birthday parties, meetings, cathedral events, civic events, and even served lunch to a member of the royal family.
It’s not been entirely smooth sailing, we’ve gone through 3 credit card readers, 2 dishwashers, and we are on our 3rd coffee machine, but it’s made a difference.
Café 16 exists to provide second chances to prison leavers, offering employment and training in the food industry, and a pathway to a crime-free independent life. In one year, we have offered over 4500 hours of employment and training to people with criminal records.
“When I came out of prison, I had to live in a hostel. There were all sorts of bad things going on there. Having work in Café 16 and being around good people, it keeps you on track and keeps you away from things like that. It makes all the difference”.
Tom, employed in Café 16 inside HMP Northumberland, and then went on to work at our Newcastle Cathedral site said this about working with The Oswin Project.
In one year we have used 150kg of Coffee, served 2,500 litres of hot drinks , 6 thousand lunches, and about 10 thousand slices of cake! Our busiest day of the week is Thursday, our most popular cake is the lemon drizzle, egg and cress is our most popular sandwich and strawberry jam continues to be our bestselling condiment.
Congratulations to all the team!
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