The initial connection between The Bren Project and Hoole URC was made at One Chester Community Partnership’s networking event in late 2024.
Bren Brews is now open at Hoole URC from 10am to 3pm on Monday to Friday, with coffee, tea, milkshakes and cakes all on the menu.
Alongside staff from The Bren Project, beneficiaries are volunteering at the community café to support their personal development.
Andy Ashford, Charity Manager at The Bren Project, said: “For a long time, we’ve wanted to broaden our offer.
“Our main ethos is to provide supported work placements to our beneficiaries, and we’ve historically done that through Bren Bikes and external placements in the community.
“A big strategic aim of ours has been to open a community café, but we’ve been looking for the right venue and feel for a café.
“We met Hoole URC at a networking event run by CWVA and One Chester Community Partnership. We had a great chat, an initial conversation and that was the start of the whole process.
“We had a couple of weeks without beneficiaries to test out all the systems, but we now have five beneficiaries volunteering on placement, learning all about hospitality and the skills needed to pursue a career in this area.
“It needed to be a welcoming space as we wanted it to feel like a great base for people with disabilities to be on placement, as well as for our customers to feel at home.
“We’ve had an awful lot of customers through the door, which has been brilliant, and we’ve genuinely been so pleased with the reaction.”
There are seven Community Partnerships across Cheshire West, supported by CWVA and bringing together a wide range of organisations and sectors to tackle health inequalities at a local level.
If your organisation is interested in engaging with Community Partnerships, please email: rosemary.harrington@cwva.org.uk.
Receive weekly updates with the latest news and information for community sector organisations
Sign up here
