Baked potatoes are back on the menu at an award-winning Darlington community café thanks to a four-figure grant from regional employer the Banks Group.
Café JJ serves a range of sandwiches, pies, soups and desserts to around 100 people every Tuesday lunchtime, all of which are made from scratch and served by a 13-strong team of people with learning disabilities.
The café’s existing baked potato oven broke down at the end of last year, and with no spare space in the ovens at the Clifton Community Centre kitchen, the popular choice disappeared from the menu.
But now, the team has used a £1,377 Banks Community Fund grant to bring in a new state-of-the-art oven that will enable them to get back to baking.
Located on Clifton Road, Café JJ was founded by Valerie and Joseph Hutchinson 18 years ago as a place for their learning-disabled son and his best friend to gain catering industry experience and skills.
The team members shop every Monday for the ingredients they need for the meals they’ll be making in the Centre’s commercial kitchen and also prepare lunches for each other to help them perfect their recipes.
The cafe also acts as a warm space where local people can spend time before it starts serving opens and helps to tackle issues around social isolation, especially among local older people.
It’s the second time that the Banks Group has supported Café JJ’s work, with a £1,000 grant in 2021 contributing towards its rental costs for the year.
Leah Kelly, project manager at Café JJ, says: ”The self-confidence that our team members gain by working in our kitchen is just as important as the new transferable skills they’re learning, and it’s brilliant to regularly see how many of them come out of their shells and really blossom over the months and years they’re with us.
“We also provide a welcoming, warm space in which anyone can spend some time talking to friends old and new, and we know from what our customers tell us just how much of a difference this makes to their well-being when they might not otherwise be seeing many other people through their week.
“We don’t have a great deal of capital to work with, and when the old baked potato oven broke down, we knew it be a real challenge for us to buy a new one by ourselves.
“We’re really grateful to the Banks team for stepping in to help us once again and very happy to able to bring this very popular lunch option back to our menu.”
Kate Culverhouse, community relations manager at the Banks Group, adds: “Café JJ is a brilliant project that has much more of a positive impact across the local community than just the lovely meals made and served by its talented team.
“It’s a wonderful place for people to spend some time while they’re enjoying their weekly lunch and we hope even more local residents will pop along on a Tuesday lunchtime to see what’s on the menu.”
The Banks Group’s community funds are independently managed by Point North (formerly the County Durham Community Foundation).
Anyone from a community close to a Banks Group project who is interested in applying for funding from the Banks Community Fund should contact the company via its website enquiry form (www.banksgroup.co.uk/contact-us/) to find out if their group or project is eligible.