We offer better eating options for those who visit The Marie Trust via our training kitchen and healthy living café. It provides healthy meals each day and operates at two sittings: breakfast and lunch. To encourage our visitors to have a more balanced diet, we offer healthy breakfast alternatives for free and charge £1.50 for a more traditional full breakfast. At lunch times we provide three healthy homemade meals; fish, meat, and vegetarian options at a £1.50 cost with free fruit, salad, and a choice of breads and fruit juices.
All food is cooked by our head chef and volunteers in our training kitchen. Their approach is to provide homemade nutritious meals and minimise the use of preservatives. This ensures that the food we offer in the café is wholesome and nutritious.
A large part of what we do is to develop structure and teamwork, which then nurtures confidence and self-worth. Every volunteer undertakes practical ‘on the job’ training in all aspects of working in a kitchen. This involves cooking from scratch, cleaning schedules, temperature controls and stock rotation.
On average, 80+ people each day use the café as their main source of food provision.
'When people get to The Marie Trust, they feel they can breathe. Everywhere they go they are subject to huge scrutiny, but not there…It is somewhere that they can feel safe and valued, things a lot of people take for granted.’