News
International Fusion of Flavours Comes to Weavers Field
A Food and Culture festival was held this Saturday to celebrate the re-opening of the Weavers Field Café under the management of social enterprise Flavour Gateway. The launch event offered local residents an opportunity to sample items from the new menu, and to enjoy a range of performances, art and activities that celebrated the diversity of the local community.
Flavour Gateway is a trading division of City Gateway, a local regeneration charity. The refurbished café renamed Café Relax, offers free training and apprenticeships in catering and hospitality to economically inactive members of the community. The enterprise, which was previously located at City Gateway’s women’s project in Poplar, has already transformed the lives of many local residents.
Café Relax offers an excellent international menu, which allows customers to sample a range of flavours from South Asian specialities to traditional British cuisine. The dedicated staff team has a passion for fresh food and has earned a well-deserved reputation for serving good quality and healthy food at affordable prices after being awarded Gold standard at the LBTH Health awards.
The venue, which was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001, has a striking interior which has been decorated to reflect the cultural diversity of the east end and is available to be booked for catered events. Flavour Gateway caters for events of various sizes across London. E-mail: info@flavourgateway.com or phone 020 3189 0412 to find out more.
Director of Social Enterprise, Yvette Elkana says, “We are investing in the lives of local people and we are making a positive difference so help us to do more by using the café and our catering services. We embody the ideas behind the Big Society and we know how to make it work.”
Cafe Relax brings healthy food and a warm welcome to Poplar
Flavour Gateway opened Cafe Relax City Gateway Women’s Project’s Poplar site in April 2009. View coverage in the Eastend Life here. The cafe is run by the local community, for the local community. We aim to:
- Provide access to healthy, affordable food for local residents
- Facilitate social interactions within the diverse local community, including cross-cultural and intergenerational interactions
- Educate our customers about healthy and sustainable eating
- Provide Front of House Catering experience for women in Tower Hamlets who are currently economically inactive (through Flavour Gateway’s Training Programme)
Between April and September 2009 Cafe Relax opened on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, serving a delicious menu of healthy items to a loyal and growing customer base. We are delighted to be launching an improved menu, extended – Monday to Friday – opening hours, and a local residents’ discount card this October.
“The vegetable soup was amazing and very filling – lovely flavour and chunky veg. Coffee was quality – the first one in Poplar like this, nearest good coffee is Canary Wharf! I must tell others...” Local resident and mother
“We think this cafe is really lovely and the food is very nice compared to what we usually have around this area” Local employee
View Cafe Relax’s current menu here.
Canary Wharf chefs 'buddy up' with Flavour Gateway Trainees
Buying from City Gateway’s catering and media social enterprises is a great way to support our work but Thomson Reuters & Restaurant Associates have gone one step further, partnering with us on a new Kitchen Buddies scheme. Women taking our new level 2 Catering & Hospitality certificate and NVQ/apprenticeship will now get the chance to get additional work experience and training in a corporate environment alongside their role within Flavour Gateway.
Chandarani, our Head Chef and start-up member of the enterprise, has piloted the scheme and we can already see the impact of her mentoring as she passes on her new knowledge to other staff. The team are getting used to all her sentences starting “at Thomson Reuters they...”!