The Good Loaf is an Artisan Bakery & Cafe providing real bread to businesses & the public, offering training & employment opportunities to female ex-offenders
We are a new artisan bakery and cafe based in Northampton and due to open to the public on 1st July. We are a non-profit social enterprise offering training and employment opportunities to female ex-offenders. We received Big Lottery funding to set up and operate the project, however we require additional funding to furnish our new cafe as we didn’t expect to secure such a large space!
The bakery will provide hand-crafted artisan bread to local cafes, delis, pubs and restaurants in addition to selling direct to the public from our new cafe in Overstone Road, Northampton. The cafe will provide a small but tasty menu dedicated to quality local produce, we are still working on the cafe menu throughout June but have already started to build some good relationships with other local food producers and suppliers. We want the cafe to be a real community space where people can come and experience all that is great about Northamptonshire food and drink, whilst enjoying our bread and a decent cup of coffee with friends.
We will support around 100 female offenders each year who will work through a structure 12 week work programme, providing practical skills in baking and cooking as well as completing a food hygiene certificate, an accredited qualification and a work reference on successful completion of the course. All of this will help them to break the cycle of offending and secure paid employment.
The cafe will be staffed by volunteers from the local community and from the work programme who will work alongside each other. We want to break down barriers and remove the stigma that many women face once they have a criminal record…by doing this we enable the women to get back to contributing to society and providing for their families.
All future recruitment for the bakery and cafe will take place from within the women who have successfully completed the work programme and from the team of volunteers. We are also building relationships with other food businesses who could offer employment to disadvantaged women who have completed our work programme.
Our bread is 100% natural, real bread. We bake using traditional methods without the use of preservatives or enhancers. It tastes amazing and is naturally more healthy. We use only quality local ingredients for our bread and are focused on reducing the road miles of our loaves. We are in the process of applying for the Real Bread Mark and hope to achieve this before we open on the 1st July.
Why do we need further funding?
We need this funding to make the cafe look its best. The income that is generated by the bakery and cafe will all be reinvested into the project and our work with rehabilitating ex-offenders. We also need to be self-sustaining by the end of the Big Lottery funding period – so that the project can continue and will be paying for itself. All of this means that we need a welcoming and professional looking cafe space.
We can’t do that without your support! Please consider pledging any amount you can. Not only will you be helping to create a space for the whole community to use, you will also be directly affecting the lives of the many women we hope to support in the coming years. It’s just tables and chairs but it’s also so much more!
Every penny that is pledged will be spent on furniture for the cafe. If we raise more than our target then we will also be able to afford new sofas (we currently have a selection of mis-matched donated ones that we would use elsewhere in the charity) and some specialist equipment for the bakery that we currently can’t afford but would increase our production capacity.