THE HISTORY

It has taken a long time and a lot of hard work to get Bermondsey Community Kitchen where it is today. This is our story, it may be a long one but it shows how faith and determination can make a dream a success.

Mike Donovan the Founder and Chair of Bermondsey Community Kitchen, was born and bred in Bermondsey.

This is the story of Mike’s background to help you understand why he decided to take on the enormous task of setting up the Bermondsey Community Kitchen, and why it means so much to him personally.

Mike grew up in a family of four brothers and three sisters, all living in a three-bedroom council home. It was provided to them through a raffle with their family name being picked out of a hat. Mike’s father, was a London Docker and dispite his long working hours, did all he could to help in the family home and often would cook dinners using the rabbits and chickens he kept in the garden along with the vegetables he grew himself to provide for the family. This is something Mike feels we greatly need to bring these values back into Bermondsey and with this project we will aim to educate the future youth of Bermondsey and demonstrate how they can bring back some of the old ways and incorporate them into modern life.

Mike’s first job was whilst he was still at school, age 14 at a Printer’s in Victoria and after school he would take two buses and a tube to get there. Mike left St Michael’s School with only a C in Woodwork. However, this didn’t stop him from becoming a successful businessman in several lines, and his personal story demonstrates that with the right attitude, you can always move forward in your life.

Mike began the Bermondsey Community Kitchen after seeing the young people in the area with nothing to do and nowhere to go. He wanted to put something back to the community he has always held dearly, and has invested huge amounts of energy and time into the project.

This is where the story really begins. After chatting with Ann Clayton, the Local Community Engagement Manager for Big Local South Bermondsey, she steered Mike in the direction of Un-Ltd, a grant funder who would provide not only startup funding for new social enterprises but also mentoring support, which in some ways was more valuable than the funding itself. An application was submitted and was successful. Un-Ltd provided us with mentors Debevoise & Plimpton, a law firm who supported Bermondsey Community Kitchen in becoming a C.I.C (Community Interest Company). They submitted our Mems & Arts to Companies House and established us as a non-for profit organisation, vital to obtaining the additional funding required to get the project off the ground. Our organisation was officially constituted in July 2014.

Ann then advised Mike to approach United St Saviour’s, a local north Southwark charity and Mike was successful in securing £50,000.00 of funding for the equipment required to fit out the kitchen. This funding did not ensure an easy path to officially opening. There were many bumps in road, and this is where the hard work really started.

The space for the kitchen was empty and derelict, it had to be cleared out and the floor had to be leveled off, which entailed bringing 3 tonnes of sand and cement up the stairs. It was then polysafe capped and coved kitchen flooring was fitted. The £50k’s worth of equipment had to be carried up the stairs by Mike, Russell (our Vice Chair) and help from local boys. Carrying 8 double ovens, multiple boxes, a 10 grid combine oven and 4 fridges up two sets of stairs. This was not was an easy task, but once it was all, unpacked and laid out, people could see the vision stat yo take shape.

Funding from Grosvenor Estates for five years was secured for the trainer, Ms. Jenny Armstrong who had been patiently waiting for the kitchen to get to a point where she could join us. Also, funding from Southwark Council was secured for a Grants and Admin Officer to take on the additional workloads and strain of the project.

Once all equipment was in place, we had to have all the electrics fitted. This was a major task and took considerable time with many setbacks. The electric supply in the premises was inadequate, we had few options open to us on how we could fit a new three-phase electric power supply. Power Networks put forward fitting a new sub station on our road as there wasn’t currently one there, this would have cost £95k and was out of our funding budget. Once we ruled this option out we were provided with another from Power Networks, reducing our power supply and digging a trench up the rear of the service road to run a new cable supply into the property from the mains cables on the street, this option was the only one we had and cost around £15,000. This however was not the end of our electricity problems, we now had the power we needed but none of our equipment had been wired in. This is when our saviors Keepmoat Ltd came to our rescue, they are a local building and regeneration company working with Southwark Council and not only supplied the cables and wiring required but fitted it free of charge. This work took weeks and was worth around £15,000.00, without Keepmoat we wouldn’t be operational today.

You would think this would be the last of the challenges and we could get started. Unfortunately not, there was so much work that to be done to setup a kitchen of our size. Our custom made 8 meter long cooker hood then arrived flat pack and had to be build in three separate sections, hoisted with a lift and secured to the ceiling on tracks, then the extractor flue had to be built and secured to the external building with a hole knocked through the wall connecting it to the cooker hood. Multiple pieces of equipment had to be put together and set up in the kitchen including 11 prep tables, mixers, double fryer, knife racks, free standing racks, shelves, hand towels unit, kitchen bins, industrial mops, locker units, utilities cupboard, fire extinguishers, health and safety signs and more. Hundreds of cooking utensils had to be unpacked, cleaned and put away including 32 different pans, 24 frying pans, 24 pots and colanders, 432 knives, forks and spoons, bowls, trays, saucepans, knife packs, peelers, graters, spoons and tongs, whisks, rollers, brushes, molds, basins, rolling pins, scales, pasta machines, plates, sieves and many more. The chef uniforms had to be unpacked, folded and put away. The boiler had to be plumbed in, as well as the two sets of double sinks and the combine oven. The list was endless but it was achieved with a fraction of the manpower a commercial operation would need.

The Bermondsey Community Kitchen was finally on its way to opening. We then had to enrol students into our program, we advertised in the local papers, held open days, put up signs in local noticeboards, promoted through the community council meetings and newsletters, went to the job center and education facilities and contacted charities who worked with young people such as the Princes Trust. Our project was new and we had to work very hard to find young people willing to join the course not just because we didn’t have a proven track record but also because few young people in the area were aware of what our project could offer them. Finally, students began joining our course in September 2015 and with the flexibility of the course and our ongoing enrollment policy, we built up our first group of students.

Our official launch was in September 2015, it was a great success, with many of our grant funders attending, along with members of the local community, who had helped and supported us along the way and also our newly enrolled group of students. Ann from the South Bermondsey Partnership helped secure celebrity chef Raymond Blanc through their existing work with Belmond UK. Raymond stayed at the event much longer than we expected him to, and gave a passionate speech about the power of cooking. The Michelin star chef said: “It is always humbling to see people come together like this. Good luck to these young people, who have an amazing opportunity. Food is about connecting with people, connecting with family, with history, with landscape. It is about fun!”. Raymond has continued to support our project by supplying us with his own kitchen equipment and offering to provide a demonstration cooking event with the students.

As we continued, more much needed funding was secured to ensure the project could continue, as we were a new project without any experience or track record, this proved to be difficult. Multiple applications for funding were presented and not all were successful. it is difficult trying to persuade an organisation to fund your start up project when you only have a certain number of words to present the project. But with perserverence, representatives visited our project and after meeting Mike, they could see the passion he had to make this work.

Now Bermondsey Community Kitchen is a success in its own right. Our first group of Level 1 City and Guilds Food Preparation and Cooking students passed their qualification in July 2016. Some of our students have moved onto Level 2 City and Guilds Professional Cookery qualification, with the remaining going into employment. Our project was lucky enough to have a lot of help and support from not only grant funders but also our community througout our journey.

Bermondsey Community Kitchen received funding to purchase the cafe based below our project and we officially took it over in April 2017. The cafe continued to run as it did before, and the profits are put back into running the Bermondsey Community Kitchen.

Our organisation is now expanding and we are not only a training facility but a community cafe and we will be putting together different projects including raised growing beds, free nutritional workshops, free health and hygiene training, barista training and more.

In July 2022, it was decided that we would extend our community support beyond Bermondsey to help Londoners from other boroughs, and we have become the London Community Kitchen.