Case Studies

Pop up restaurants and supper clubs are becoming an ever increasingly popular way for cooks to share food with paying customers, without the need of permanent premises. They can happen in either hired spaces, or in peoples home, and operate across varying time scales, from a temporary run of a lease within a hotel, to monthly gatherings in different locations, and one off events in someones home.

The pop-up supper club provides an experience through the sharing of food, with the idea of exclusivity or limited access acting as a market driver. The nature of this set up leans towards curated menus that are unlikely to be repeated.

A unique aspect of experiencing food in this way, is that the events are often intimate and you are sat within proximity to, and often on the same table as guests that may not previously be acquainted with one another. This couples, with the exclusivity and often themed element of the night tightens the experience by engaging with other people.

Although the pop-up super club allows hosts to cook fo parking customers with less financial risk or significant investment in premises, this does not necessarily mean that the customer is paying a reduced rate in comparison to normal restaurant experiences.

Suspended meals is the notion of paying forward a coffee or meal. Cafes and restaurants who engage with the scheme take payment for food or drink from a paying customer, to then go towards food or drink for someone in need. An integral part of the operation of suspended meals is that service users claim and enjoy there paid for items at the premise, meaning that they are able to enjoy eating out at an establishment and within the community. There are however, only as many meals as people pay forward, and many more people in need of them than there are people paying forward. This is not a guaranteed way for people to enjoy affordable or free food within the city.

Time out Canterbury is a local charity that coordinates events and services at the Canterbury Community Centre. A part of this is a lunch club and cafe run by Route 23, which offers a two course lunch for £4. The lunch also includes an activity which aims to bring joy and encourage wellbeing, which rounds off the experiencing of sitting down at a table to eat a two course meal within the community. All members of the community are welcome, and as such the initiative also means that it encourages communication and conversation, whilst sharing a meal between different people, who otherwise may not have met. This in itself extends the experience of support that the service provides. Although a key service, which is open to all members of the public, the city hall location and execution of the service is easily differentiated from a traditional cafe or restaurant setting, and as such only those in need are likely to use the service. This also limits the sense of experience to some extent.

The people Kitchen Pitsmoor is a grassroots organisation that have collaborated with Sheffield University Architecture students to imagine a community kitchen within two derelict buildings that sit in the grounds of Abbeyfield Park, an already established community resource which offers services such as gardening and allotment opportunities, and pottery workshops.

The kitchen has received funding through various charity streams, and the premise is that the kitchen will provide a place for the community to both cook and share a meal. It is to be a central part of the Abbeyfield Park centre and will bring service users together through the act of sharing a meal.

The kitchen will be complimented through other pre-existing agendas at the site, including provisions for the growing of food. The audience of the kitchen will be community minded and the act of conversing with others will have, to some extent, already been normalised due to the nature of the wider facility.

The main aims of the kitchen is to provide opportunity to share and celebrate the many cultures of Sheffield, and provide a central communal hub to the centre through the communities shared love of food. This demonstrates that a dining setting can be used to further bring people together and share cultures, even in an environment where this is normalised and encouraged.

Chef Massimo Bottura founded Cooking is an Act of Love for the 2015 Milan Exposition, where a redundant theatre in the city of Milan was converted into a restaurant for the community. The restaurant provided free food to those who needed. The kitchen was designed to a high specification and the dining area was given personality though the works of 15 contributing artists, including 13 tables that took away the opportunity for a ‘head of the table’ and the hierarchy that this brings, and an ornate entranceway to celebrate and signal the transition into the space.

This has since led to many Refettorio’s globally, all of which provide high-quality meals for free, to those who need it. The Refettorio Felix is based in London in collaboration with the Felix Project, who collect surplus and unused food, mainly from supermarkets, that would otherwise go to waste.

The meals are created by chefs with seasonality and nutrition in mind, and are served at large communal tables, which encourages conversation and engaging with new people. The hall is styled simply but to a high quality, which contributes to the feeling that dining at the Refettorio is an event and an experience. The hall can also be hired privately for pop up events which provides that charity with further income.

All members of the community are welcome to dine for free at all Refettorios, and the essence of high-quality, sustainable and seasonal food, free for all, runs throughout all of the establishments.

The Trussell Trust is a nationwide initiative and charity that helps supply basic food items to those who face food poverty. A large proportion of the food provided is gathered from donations from members of the public. Each City or Town has several locations in which residents can pick up food parcels of essential items. This is one of the most fundamental sources of providing free food to those who need it, and is an initiative that is found most widespread across the country. It does not, however provide a distinguished opportunity for engaging and conversing with other service users, nor does it provide an experience or opportunity to eat with others.

Time out Canterbury, Route 23

Peoples Kitchen Pitsmoor

Scale: Market Driven to Free Services

Lima Community Kitchens

Community kitchens of Lima have not only allowed women to play a key role in the community, outside of the domestic setting, but it has also allowed them to be engaged in the politics of the community. The very notion of the kitchens was born out of political and economic unrest.

The roots of the kitchen can be found in food markets, where volunteers collected waste produce for this who could not afford to eat.

This movement then more formally manifested itself into a collection of women who made provisions within the domestic kitchen to provide food for the wider community. The success of this led to the uptake of it across the urban realm, and often the cost of the food has been subsidised by the government.

The kitchen provides a more meaningful societal role to both the volunteers and those receiving the food.

The success of these kitchens over generations has acted as a precedent to many, including a similar Canadian model where community facilities allow people to receive free food, and cook in the community kitchen to take back to their families.

In both examples the lines of domesticity and the city are blurred. Both also bend the role of the receiver and cook, where in the Canadian example they are one, and in the Lima Urban Kitchens, both hosts and receivers gain through convivial societal engagement, and allow them to alter the imbalance of their status within society.