About
About us
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Open since July 2019, the homestead cafe is situated in a beautifully restored Georgian stable block in Beckenham Place Park. With views from the terrace over the flower filled gardens and down toward the swimming lake we are close to the car park and the new children's play area.
We're coffee geeks who love proper beer and pizza. We use Square Mile coffee, always have a large selection of locally brewed craft beer and make awesome stone baked pizzas to take into the park. Our head chef Niki and her team ensure that the counter is always filled to the brim with freshly baked delights for everyone. Vegans are always well catered for and we have many gluten free options.
Check out our food & drinks pages for more info.
Sustainability​
We worked hard to become zero waste in 2021. Our efforts will continue into and throughout the coming years as we take our responsibility very seriously for minimising the impact we have on the environment. Our aim is to have a closed loop waste system where all materials and packaging are either recycled or are biodegradable.
The pandemic allowed us to reconsider the 'traditional' way of serving. We continue to run as a take away only business, where you can enjoy our coffee, brioches, pizzas and bar drinks in the courtyard, on the terrace overlooking the beautiful flower gardens or in Beckenham Place Park itself. We love the park and feel very privileged to be working in it.
Here are a few of the initiatives we have introduced:
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Aluminium cans – we have installed a can crusher and signs to ask that customers and park users crush their cans and put them in the dedicated bin ready for collection by a local metal merchant in Lewisham. Aluminium is 100% recyclable and so every can counts with no new raw materials used. We were pleased to be working with a local metal merchant to reduce the road miles involved in recovery and recycling.
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Cardboard – we sell a huge number of takeaway pizzas and as a result release a large number of pizza boxes into the park. We realise that these boxes would quickly fill the park bins so our boxes are printed with instructions using non-toxic ink asking customers to return them to the café. We use ridged paper under the pizzas to reduce the chances of the cardboard becoming contaminated by food waste to maximise recycling. Recovered boxes brought back to the café are currently flattened and added to our dry recycling for collection. Some of the boxes are collected by Grow Lewisham for use on a local community garden where they use them for ‘No Dig’ beds and in the compost heap.
We are working with Nudge Project and closely with various Lewisham Council departments: Climate Emergency, Waste, Parks and Open Spaces and other businesses in the park to accelerate our sustainability journey in all aspects. One area being investigated is the possibility of installing a bio-digester. A digester loves nothing more than to quickly turn food waste, cardboard, paper and green waste into rich compost ready for use in the park. We will update you in due course on this and other areas as things progress.
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Plastics – we have reduced the products we offer in plastic packaging wherever possible. We are working with suppliers to minimise the plastic wrapping used in transportation. Where we have been unable to remove this altogether, we are installing a TerraCycle collection box that is sent to a specialist recycling centre.
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Coffee grounds – we bag up our coffee grounds for collection by park users to enrich their compost heaps, helping plants and vegetables grow.
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Plastic Tubs – we get through a lot of ice cream which comes in 5 Litre white tubs that we reuse for all sorts of storage in the café and we also give these away to park users to be given a second home.
We love that our waste is helping plants and vegetables and other businesses throughout Lewisham and welcome other local groups to make contact if they have other good uses.