Café serves care home residents supermarket surplus

Skelmersdale Care home residents received a special invitation to a Skelmersdale café that specialises in turning supermarket surplus food into delicious meals.

Residents and staff at Aaron Crest Care Home, on Tanhouse Road, were given the VIP treatment at the nearby Junk Food Café.

Café coordinator David Scott reserved a table and served a home cooked, three-course banquet after spotting several of the home’s residents walking by.

They pass the Tanhouse Community Centre, where the café opens every Wednesday, on their weekly walk to the newsagents.

David invited them in for a tour before offering to cook for them if they returned with fellow residents and staff from the care home.

Five residents and two staff members took him up on the offer and were treated to food and music alongside other members of the community.

He said: “We intercept surplus food from Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Lidl. All the food we get would otherwise end up in landfill or in our bins.

“Our café is run on a “pay as you feel” basis. This means people come and eat then give their time, skills, or money for their meal.

“We have two cafés, one in Tanhouse and the other in the Ecumenical Centre, all run by our amazing army of volunteers.”

Adrienne Ratcliffe, home manager at Aaron Crest Care Home, said: “It was so kind of David to invite our residents and staff for a meal.

“What a wonderful idea to take good ingredients supermarkets would otherwise throw away and turn it into delicious food.

“The quality of the courses our residents and staff enjoyed were brilliant and they all said they would recommend it to friends and family.

“There was also music and lots of people from the community, so the residents enjoyed good conversation.”