Community Cafes

Community cafes are places where people can come to eat a reasonably priced meal in a sociable environment and can provide an ideal opportunity to promote healthy eating, although not all cafes actually provide healthy food. Cafes also sometimes but not always use locally sourced food.

Community cafes can be situated within a variety of settings, including community buildings and Healthy Living Centres. Some cafes provide additional services such as internet access and training and aim to support the needs of the community. The majority of cafes depend upon funding from external sources as they are not-for-profit organisations.

In Scotland, a project was undertaken to increase healthy eating choices in 13 community cafes in Glasgow. The pilot project ran for one year and ended in 2004. An evaluation report was produced called Promoting Healthy Eating Choices in Community Cafes, which describes the key points learnt from the project. The intervention tackled four main aspects of community cafes; access to, affordability, availability and awareness of healthy and nutritious food. The evaluation demonstrated that acceptability of healthy food is also an issue to consider when encouraging healthy eating.
To access the evaluation report click on Promoting Healthy Eating Choices in Community Cafes .