The cafe at Liverpool Meeting House. Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Backhouse.
Meeting houses and cafes
Andrew Backhouse reflects on opportunties for outreach
Reading an article in the Friend about how we can be more welcoming stirred me to look around a bit more. At my own Meeting in Wilmslow we just about represent the local community, which is mostly white and middle class – though without many younger folk at Meeting.
I was sitting on the reception desk at Liverpool Meeting House, where I work, and looking around saw four young women of Somali extraction having a good ‘chin wag’ after school at the free bookable table in the foyer. They have been in a few times. It is a safe friendly space, with a Quiet Room on the same floor for prayer. Then two young adults from Libya came in to pray – and chatted to me about ablution needs. When the Quiet Room was put in for all faiths, we did not install anywhere for Muslim ablutions. Who else did I see? Meeting for Worship on a Thursday lunchtime is well attended, often with a reasonable ethnic and age mix. Some have come in as a result of the free mindfulness session that the Meeting runs on a Tuesday. They see the need to take time out from busy stress-filled lives and appreciate the community. At least one semi-homeless person comes at times. Generally, a wide range of people come to meetings in the building. There are those doing drink awareness courses for drivers, the probation service clients, the University of the Third Age (U3A), the music exams, the City Council, the Community Voice gathering of those in need of housing and support, and the businesses holding staff days. An extremely wide variety of groups use the building and they all seem to appreciate the welcome and the atmosphere – or the strapline my colleague has cleverly given us: ‘Peace in the city.’
I am really grateful for work other Quakers have done in transforming the ground floor of our building to being welcoming. We are a city centre Meeting house, accessible for all. Originally, eleven years ago, one came through a secure foyer past the staff office and had to be let in. Then someone opened a room on the ground floor, with its own door, where people could drop in to make a coffee and put in a donation, sometimes using volunteers to serve and wash up. Local workers and some church people used it and appreciated it.
Four years ago the Meeting took a bold plunge. I would describe it as ‘inspired’ – or perhaps they were making the most of past legacies. Quakers opened up the ground floor of the building, taking out the entry hall and office, and putting in the Quiet Room, a project room and a proper vegetarian cafe. The range of people this brings into the building is incredible: Primark staff of all levels, the singles, the regulars and those who picked up on us from hosting a vegan fair. Whilst the cafe is not the cheapest, it pays decent wages and uses Fairtrade and local produce. Local Friends did a brilliant job in finding the right partner, whose values we could share, to run the cafe.
The Meeting works in a social partnership with Blackburne House, an educational charity working particularly with women, who know how to run cafes. The staff and volunteers are managed by Blackburne House, though there can be differences as to who is aiming to pay the Living Wage Foundation rate and when… People say they appreciate the peacefulness of the building as well as the friendly welcome. It has been good, too, to extend the catering to the hired out rooms. It’s been fun to have Britain Yearly Meeting trustees visiting for a meeting, to have local Quakers hiring the building for their professional training courses and getting our catering, let alone the many training groups and charities that use us. Up to 25,000 customers appreciating the Quaker cafe plus the hirers of the building is not bad, is it?
It cost a lot of money to alter the building and to run a cafe. After three years of operation, it is nearly breaking even on operating costs – but then there is the need for that replacement new dishwasher (instead of the secondhand one we bought originally). As I look at the audiences of our building I think we are doing well – but Paul Grey, from Friends House Hospitality, highlighted the fact that we still do not say enough about Quakers: who we are, why we have this cafe and Quiet Room, and why we have a partnership with Blackburne House. We have to remember our buildings are there to make Quakers better known and more widely understood, not just bring in an income.
How do we draw them in to Meeting for Worship? Or do we just work hard to make them aware that Quakers are alive and well and active in all sorts of ways? And are cafes the answer? Or is it just opening up our buildings in new ways? The development of the bookshop in Friends House to be more of a cafe must have really upset some Friends when it happened about fourteen years ago. Why downgrade one of our best outreach points? But sales of books are down across the world, and more of us like to sit over a cup of coffee. So, how do you make good use of space to raise the profile of Friends and make people welcome? All my friends who visit London tell me of having visited Friends House and used the cafe – praising its value for money, the welcome from staff, and the calmness off the Euston Road, though none had heard of the restaurant.
So, which Meeting houses have tried cafes or other new means of drawing in a wider range of people? Has it helped other Quaker Meetings too? The first I ever came across is Warwick’s, which opened in 1992. It is supposed to be a ‘community cafe’, occupying the front building off the street, and is set up as an outreach arm, run by a franchisee and some volunteers. As I understand it, the franchisee pays a percentage of the turnover, and Friends buy and maintain the equipment. It has a few Quaker volunteers, and information about Quakers around, but the warden seems to think it has had little impact on bringing in new people, though plenty of visitors pick up the leaflets about Quakers. The franchisee says that Fairtrade products seem to make things too expensive for the audience they aim at. It does not bring in much surplus for the Local Meeting.
The Quaker Tapestry set up a cafe in the courtyard area of Kendal Meeting House a long time ago – but found it difficult to do it themselves viably. It has since been taken on by a tenant, who pays rent and their own electricity, gas, and utilities bills. It depends on a local clientele more than the Tapestry, and mostly has material about the Tapestry rather than Quakers specifically. So, has it helped the Meeting or the Tapestry?
Then there are the cafes that can open to customers when there is a big event. Central Edinburgh Meeting House is not just a venue for various performances, but has a cafe for the three weeks of the Edinburgh Festival. Until this year, it was staffed by volunteers, and it raised about £1,500 per annum for the charities the Meeting wanted to support. Over the twenty-five or so years it was run the initiative provided a good service and an opportunity to promote Quakers. But hygiene requirements get tougher, people get older, and you need a very special set of skills to run a cafe well. This year they got in a franchisee to run it. Turnover was much higher, and the Meeting will benefit from some of that and the wardens and volunteers (who still run a box office) have apparently enjoyed the festival more.
So, running things that bring a wider audience into the Meeting house can be useful, but running a cafe needs skilled staff who know their business. How do we get them paying living wages, using Fairtrade products, or sharing some of our values if we do not run them ourselves? What have you done that works?
