Lily's Bistro - Canterbury

Lily’s Social Kitchen is a Not-For-Profit Organisation

Lily’s Social Kitchen CIC is a social enterprise which provides employment and employment training to people with neuro diversity with or without cognitive challenges and people with learning disabilities. We use food as our vehicle to provide these opportunities in our cafes, our catering business and in our office space.

Our cafes provide an important part of the training we provide our young people as well as providing food and meals to our local communities. All our cafes are on a donation only basis to ensure they are accessible to everyone in our community. Menus may change weekly as we base these on our food allocation from Fareshare Kent – making sure food stays out of bins and gets into tummies.

Our first and longest running cafe is set in the heart of The Creative Quarter and has views of the beautiful Canterbury Cathedral. There is a small outside seating area in which customers can enjoy a coffee made by one of our trainees and soak in the beautiful atmosphere.

The menu is simple to ensure it is easy for our trainees to prepare and changes each week. The menu changes each week and is geared to make delicious food which can be easily prepared by our trainees and volunteers. Usually this includes quiche, salads, sandwiches and a selection of sausage/vegan rolls and sandwiches made fresh to order.

This site is public facing in the middle of a busy city centre with both locals and visitors enjoying the service provided by our trainees.

As we are in the city centre the site is easily accessible by public transport and so can be accessed by people from Ashford, Folkestone and the surrounding areas of Canterbury.

In this site the trainees learn front of house skills such as using the till, clearing tables, taking orders and conversing with customers. They also learn barista skills making coffee and our delicious hot chocolates and preparing food to order. Learning about food hygiene, safe food practices and maintaining a clean working environment. This includes participating in washing up and regular cleaning!