HOLY ROAST a Pop Up Horse Box Café Project

LAUNCHED SUMMER 2018 – ‘Horsebox initiative’, a low-cost, high-impact and flexible engagement programme, with great coffee. 

Holy Roast’s very first outing was at the St Columba Summer Fair in June, serving up great coffee, homemade lemonade and the most delicious hot chocolate, everything was given away for free and we were all touched by the generous donations folk left as a thank you – it was such a hit, St Columba have already booked Holy Roast for their Summer Fair next year and are looking at other opportunities where they can use it to connect with local people.

Run along social enterprise lines, the HOLY ROAST  project gives CSR a timely and genuine opportunity to engage across the diocese with a range of people, networks and communities that the church has often struggled to reach. Using a pop up café format it offers connection in a way that is welcoming, undemanding and treats everyone on their own terms. Holy Roast highlights how the church is changing and how it is genuinely focused on all of its community.

From time to time the Horsebox will also be on loan to the Good Neighbours Network, so they too can pop up with some innovative volunteer recruitment ideas and engage with all Good Neighbours everywhere over a cup of coffee.

It will:

1. Illustrate the way the church is prepared to think, be and do ‘different’
2. Offer positive connections that can help with signposting and access to other networks
3. Engage directly with audiences and communities with a light touch
4. Provide a good quality and affordable hospitality addition to parishes’ existing offer

This project underpins the CSR engagement programme which is designed to connect with communities in new and different ways.

Churches and other community projects are welcome to host the Horsebox, they will be trained in ‘How to be a Barista for the day’, how to adopt the suspend a coffee campaign and the benefits and pitfalls of a community cafe offer. Supported by CSR there will also be an opportunity to develop a collection of vibrant and relevant engagement tools to connect and reach outward. This initiative will be enhanced by a new CSR publication ‘So you want to run a community café ?’ available FREE on request from CSR for all charity minded organisations. Bursting with useful tips and insights on running a successful café this publication is an essential part of a tool kit for any catering start up.

As a secondary aim and objective the intention is that the project will generate income for CSR making this a sustainable project as it grows and evolves. The hosts will benefit by having an opportunity to boost their own revenue streams by providing further food offers such as home-made cakes, biscuits and sandwiches.

As the poet Steve Turner said ‘friendships begin with a coffee’