Swan Kitchens cafe
Swan Kitchens is Back on Track’s in-house café. It provides catering training in a commercial standard kitchen, plus vital work experience to people facing barriers to employment.
Our team of volunteers run the cafe day to day, cooking and serving customers. For those who want to explore a career in catering there is the opportunity to gain qualifications in areas like food safety, and people also get transferable skills like customer service and financial literacy. Lots of local businesses contribute by running workshops and we have volunteers from a huge range of backgrounds, including professional chefs.
The cafe enables us to provide healthy and delicious meals for our members, volunteers, staff and visitors to our centre, tackling food poverty and providing a social space for people to enjoy.
Swan Kitchens reduces food waste by working with Fareshare, which distributes surplus food from supermarkets. It also uses ethical and sustainable products. Many of our courses have a sustainable focus, teaching people how to cook plant based meals and using fresh produce grown in local allotments.
Back on Track and 20 Stories
All this year Dan Scott, Executive Chef at the prestigious 20 Stories restaurant in Manchester, has volunteered in the Back on Track kitchen. To mark World Food Day 2023 we welcomed the cameras into the Back on Track kitchen for a chat with Dan, our Catering Manager Caron and two of our volunteers.
Helping people through the cost of living crisis
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Swan Kitchens has been vital in our work addressing the cost of living crisis:
Weekly £1 three course meals provide healthy food and reduce isolation
'Cooking on a budget' courses teach people how to stay healthy and save money
The cafe gives out slow cookers which are much cheaper to use
