CaféLife, the popular community café on Cheyne Street, has just reopened with a brand new menu and revamped interiors following its forced closure through the pandemic.
Run by local charity LifeCare Edinburgh, all proceeds from the café go towards supporting the delivery of the organisation’s vital care services for older people living across Edinburgh.
The charity, which turned 80 last year, helps over 1,000 local older people annually. Essential services such as registered outreach care and day centres, help at home, meals on wheels and support for carers enable local older people to remain living full and independent lives.
The pandemic forced the café to close its doors to their loyal customers in March 2020. The closure has been a real loss to the area as caféLife is the only full-accessible community café around, offering good value food and drink and appealing to all generations with lots of space for buggies and wheelchairs. Opened nearly ten years ago, the team took the opportunity to upgrade the café during the Covid closure. The charity secured emergency funding to revamp CafeLife’s interiors and the kitchen team have spent time creating a new and improved menu to appeal to all tastes and dietary needs.
The charity will be joined by celebrated and best-selling Scottish crime writer Val McDermid for the official ribbon cutting event on Wednesday 11 May. Val will sign copies of any of her books brought along on the day.
Jemima Hankins, Community Hub Co-ordinator at LifeCare said “We are absolutely delighted that we are reopening CaféLife at long last. There’s nothing else like us in the area and we know how much our regular customers have missed us. We’ve a huge bright space that appeals to all ages and stages; people pop in on their own or come with friends to enjoy good honest food and drink – with all proceeds going towards our vital care services for local people. We really are a café with a difference.
“Our loyal customers love to pop in to meet or make new friends, enjoy good value food and we’re relaunching with an exciting new menu designed by Chef Tony keeping our café staples such as soups, bacon rolls and paninis but we’ve added pancakes, smoothies and milkshakes. The blueberry pancakes are a must.
“We are thrilled to be marking our reopening with a guest appearance from Val McDermid on Wednesday 11 May and we will be running lots of promotions across the week – check our socials for full details or pop-in for more info.”
LifeCare Edinburgh is a registered charity, and with no service fully-funded the organisation relies on the generosity of its funders. Recent awards from the Scottish Government’s Adapt and Thrive fund covered the cost of the café upgrades and an award from The National Lottery Community Fund supports the new Community Hub Coordinator position created to help safely bring people back to the space after the pandemic.
https://www.lifecare-edinburgh.org.uk/
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