Paul Golder writes for the Brentwood Gazette

We’ve been helping to publicise the Daily Bread Cafe, a fantastic initiative from St Peters Church in Hutton.

Lisa Whymark visited Patrick Sherring’s Friday Night Extra radio show recently and told us how the cafe had grown from an original idea of a group of mums in late 2017.

Using the premises of St. Peter’s Hutton and beginning with a few ‘drop in’ events, the cafe had expanded to being a community kitchen prior to lockdown.

This was providing food and also opportunities for people to socialise.

During lockdown the work expanded, with over thirty shops providing food that had passed the sell-by date but with in the use-by time. This was offered free to anyone who turned up with no checks asked for. Lisa told us that if people were prepared to come and stand for up to thirty minutes in the cold and rain waiting for a bag of food passed the sell-by date, then they were not going to ask for any proof of need.

The volunteers noticed that people were coming from central Brentwood and in the autumn a short-term arrangement was made for a food point at Sawyers Hall church. This is now no longer available, but recently a Saturday 10-12 slot has begun at St. George’s church, Ongar Road.

Lisa and the team are reopening on Friday 21 May, when the plan is to open daily in Hutton for coffee and chat and one day a week for a free meal.

More information is available via huttonparish.com/dailybread and you can also hear Lisa’s interview with Patrick at phoenixfm.com. We’ve also been helping to promote the Daily Bread’s campaign to launch a job club in Brentwood – you can find out more about this at www.crowdfunder.co.uk/thedailybreadjobclub.

NOTE
The photo was taken when Lisa visited the studio in 2019.