Signs, Eton Mess and Wards Exchange Piazza

It’s been full steam ahead as we head towards welcoming customers to Blend Kitchen from April 14th. We’ve been busy with training sessions covering customer service, barista skills, dealing with complaints (something we rarely get) along with menu development. The attitude of the trainees we are working with along with our previous team as we prepare to open has been brilliant.

This week we’ve been joined by Lee from Just Works. For those of you who don’t know about Just Works, it’s a project run by the Cathedral Archer Project to help people who’ve experienced homelessness move forward in life. Lee and his partner in crime Sharon were responsible for supplying the Blend Kitchen with delicious brownies, cheese cakes and flap jack when we had our old site on Pinstone street. Now we’ve got a larger kitchen, we’re able to provide in house volunteering opportunities for Lee and Sharon, improving the quality of the desserts we’ll be serving when we open. Here’s a picture of Lee with a Rhubarb and jelly ‘Eton Mess’ combing a layer of vanilla cream with meringue, rhubarb gel, poached rhubarb and garnished with our home made honey comb.

In other news we were asked to apply for the council’s ‘Covid recovery fund’. This is a scheme to support economic and cultural recovery from the pandemic. , so this week we designed the ‘Wards Exchange piazza’ scheme where we will turn the area around Blend Kitchen in a space for a farmers markets, cultural events, live music and community activities. After the news this week that John Lewis is closing, I really hope the council get on board with what we’re doing at Blend Kitchen (and the many other businesses, artists, musicians, social enterprises and charities who want to make Sheffield a better place to live) and start working  more collaboratively rather than more of the top down ‘council knows best’ attitude we’ve seen previously.

Speaking of incredible local businesses, a massive thank you to Joe and the Front Ideas team for the design of our logo and for the incredibly talented people at 93ft for turning that branding into our new sign! Here are the guys putting the sign up on Wednesday.

This week we’ve got Triple Point Brewery installing our beer pumps, I’m judging a cookery competition at the college and me and Caz are celebrating our wedding anniversary with a takeaway curry on Tuesday night.

More news next week,

Chris