Words by Smiley Team
There’s nothing like the sweet, buttery taste of a flapjack – and now you can eat one knowing you’re giving back, too.
Homelessness charity Crisis has added its own flapjacks to the shelves of its London shops, with the classic bake playing an important part in the charity’s work.
As well as providing housing, employment and wellbeing support to people experiencing homelessness, Crisis also trains up its members as chefs, waiters and baristas at its Shoreditch café.
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Baked on site at the café, the flapjacks are being delivered by bike to the coffee bars in Crisis’s Peckham, Dalston, Finsbury Park and Croydon stores and are available for customers to purchase from today (16 August).
The Crisis Flapjack is special because it’s the first thing trainees make on their first day in the kitchen. As well as helping them gain a qualification – a NOCN level 1 in preparation for work experience – it’s also their first taste of working in a professional kitchen.
Matt was living in backpacker hostels with no education or employment history when he arrived at Crisis and began the kitchen training programme. “I'd never cooked before – it was just toast until then,” he said. “I realised cooking can be messy, it's fun, it's simple - it's not a hard thing to do. After when we were eating the flapjack together, I was thinking, ‘I can actually do it’.
“When I finished the Crisis training, I went and worked as a chef. Then I was a head chef at a pub and ran my own kitchen. I went from being someone who’d never worked in a kitchen before, to running a pub kitchen in 5 months. Crisis gave me everything.”
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Charlie Atkinson, hospitality manager at Crisis, said: “We’re so excited to be selling the Crisis Flapjack in our shops’. As well as raising vital funds to support our services, each bake shows that by ending someone’s homelessness, you give that person the opportunity to move forward and flourish.”
Find out more about the work of Crisis and how to support the charity on its website.
