Sadness as Sheffield cafe Foodhall closes due to 'impossible' energy bill hikes
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Foodhall Project on Brown Street is ending operations on November 6 after feeding thousands of people over seven years. It runs an open dining room and kitchen using surplus food on a pay-what-you-can basis. It also delivers food to people in need by bicycle and is home to ‘branch projects’ from pickling sessions to bike repair workshops and art classes to DJ nights.
But despite demand soaring due to the cost of living crisis it can no longer continue. Directors Alyce Biddle, Dr Carissa Honeywell and Jim Steinke said a large grant they relied on to pay salaries ended, the building needed ‘various fixes’ to make it safe, staff had left and rising energy costs made running it ‘impossible’.
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Hide AdThey wrote: “Therefore, with a huge tear in our eye, we have taken the decision to close Foodhall as an event and public space. We know for many this will be incredibly sad. We also know what massive amounts of effort have gone into Foodhall over the years since 2015.
“We’ve travelled far from our first days on The Moor serving out bashed bananas and soup, our days in Eyre Street, where we got real cutlery and partied long into the nights, the days of first lockdowns, when we turned our small cafe into an emergency food distribution centre in two weeks and fed 15,000 meals to people across the city, to our recent times on Brown Street, finding our feet again in this new post-Covid world where the external crises never seem to stop landing.
“Whilst we want to give space to the disappointment or sadness people may be feeling, we are quietly hopeful for what this break can bring. We see this as an ending, but not The End.”
The closure comes as similar projects are being ramped up across Sheffield. The city council has launched a support package for people facing financial hardship and is promoting libraries and museums as ‘warm rooms’.
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Hide AdA ‘Cost of Living Fund’ for community groups working to ease the impact of the crisis has been launched by South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard. And charity FoodCycle has launched in Broomhall offering free three-course meals.
Foodhall was funded by the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Town Trust, Sheffield City Council and the Big Lottery Fund. In August it ran a successful ‘Crowdfund’ campaign raising £5,625 with 79 supporters to ‘enable us to stay open until Christmas’.
Now, the directors say they are ‘very keen’ to strike up partnerships allowing them to run activities elsewhere, or share their building with other like-minded organisations. And the delivery project continues, they say, with finding a new kitchen space ‘our focus’.
The cafe used to open five days a week and Sundays monthly. In recent times it cut back to a women’s marginalised genders coffee morning on Monday and the Friday cafe, its main social eating day, when a three-course meal was served.
The last Foodhall is on Friday November 4.