Hi, I’m Danny, the Catering Manager at Emmaus Mossley. Over the past year, we’ve been building a new companion kitchen for the 26 people who live at Emmaus Mossley. It’s been a long time coming for Emmaus and because the project is so big, it has been split into three phases.
Phase one was a big phase – it was the total construction of a new communal kitchen. The existing kitchen for companions was tiny, so we’ve created a new area and made it into a totally brand-new kitchen area that’s made to work for our 26 companions. The goal was to make it more accessible and to hopefully spark some cooking creativity within the community.
Alongside our cook’s kitchen, used to prepare most lunches, evening meals and food for the café, the old communal kitchen was a tiny area that had a number of challenges. Not only is the new companion kitchen area much more spacious now, but safety has been paramount, so we have taken away as many hazards as we can. The new ovens are convection ovens that turn off when the timer finishes and the hobs only work if the pan is on it, so as soon as the pan’s taken off, it switches itself off.
Catering to our needs
The golden opportunity was to provide a space for our companions to be more open to cooking themselves and learning new things. We’ve had a few people who have left here and moved into catering jobs, which I think is a good industry to move into.
The new kitchen refurb is already benefitting our community and it’s not been open very long. I think when the kitchen was in such a small space, people weren’t cooking because they were worried about getting in somebody else’s way. Whereas now it’s big enough for people to work independently or together. It’s become more of a chatty space and it’s really opened up the room. I’ve seen more people sat having their meals together and talking.
We’ve had requests that we do a Bake-Off, because if you stand in the centre of the dining area and look at the kitchen, you can kind of see that it has been designed so that we can have multiple stations for people to learn. Hopefully, one day, professionals can come in and showcase what they do to encourage our companions to try different styles of cooking.
Looking forward
Phase two will be to redecorate the communal living space and then phase three will be to improve the cook’s kitchen for our cooks and kitchen porters (KP). We have already changed the layout of the cook’s kitchen, so the space is bigger with more areas for preparing food, to improve the fluidity of how our kitchen runs. Our goals are to be more energy efficient and for our equipment to have a longer life span. We want to create a space for the cook and KP to have a more professional catering environment.
Our current cooks are Neil, Rita, Richard, Gary and Darren, and we are training up a few other people at the moment. They all share the cooking duties every fortnight, preparing meals for everyone in our community for most of the week and making the soups for our café. The cooks are assigned a KP, which is a responsibility shared by everyone who lives at our community.
There’s a dishwasher in the communal kitchen now, so it’s much easier to maintain a clean and tidy kitchen, and it means the KP can have a more varied role as it takes the weight off their shoulders. Hopefully, the KP can take on more of the cook’s role and learn from them too.
What it boils down to
We couldn’t have done any of this without Emmaus supporters, local organisations and the wider community. A big, big thanks go to The Roger Tanner Trust, a legacy gift from Richard Darlington and another generous legacy donation, for their incredible contributions.
And who could forget the Viva Las Emmaus Cabaret? Not only was it a great night, but all the money raised went towards our new kitchen refurb and dining room improvements. So, a huge thank you to everyone who attended, performed, organised and helped out at the event.
Without our supporters, we wouldn’t be able to do what we have done. From people’s donated goods, we managed to source quite a few kitchen items, so that’s been fantastic! Even when supporters come in and compliment the soup, it makes a big difference. You can see the pride from the cook when somebody says, ‘oh that soup was really nice!’ I’ve noticed our cooks have become much more confident and creative with their cooking over the past year. They’re doing fantastic.
We recently hosted the Volunteers’ Week celebration meal in our newly improved kitchen and dining room. It’s lovely to give back to the people who give so much to our charity on a weekly basis. The new space made it a great atmosphere and we actually used the new kitchen to bake the cakes too.
A final thank you to everyone involved in this exciting project and we’re looking forward to more improvements being made over the coming months.