Gather & Gather has officially announced the launch of Bench, its first high street café, located in the Goldsmiths’ Centre in Farringdon.
Two minutes from Farringdon Station and situated at the heart of the Clerkenwell creative community, Bench is a central element of the Goldsmiths’ Centre at 42 Britton Street serving users of the Centre, the local business and residential community. It has a strong coffee offer, fresh hand crafted and innovative food with the option of eating out or using the 52 internal and 20 external covers.
Gather & Gather began working at the Goldsmiths’ Centre in late summer of 2014, quickly changing the nature of the food, preparing everything fresh on site and injecting the street food ethos of Gather & Gather into the operation.
The Goldsmiths’ Centre team worked with Boyd Thorpe Associates, an independent catering consultancy, who provided advice and support in identifying Gather & Gather as a successful catering partner for private venue hire and its in-house café. In December Gather & Gather worked with the Goldsmiths’ Centre team and Fit Creative to refresh the Bench brand to ensure it reflected the Centre’s own values, its sense of creativity, craftsmanship and community to become Gather & Gather’s first high street café.
Turnover trebled
“Bench is a really exciting project for us because as well as taking the Gather & Gather concept into the high street arena for the first time, we have already proved that our approach is one that the public love as we have seen turnover at Bench treble in December 2014 compared to twelve months before. Bench exemplifies Gather & Gather’s approach of bringing food and people together and the importance of creating a collaborative space for the local community to interact with each other over food and coffee,” said Allister Richards, managing director of Gather & Gather.
Bench’s strapline of ‘coffee, kitchen, craft’ highlights the key focus areas of the café; expertly crafted coffee from Bristol roasters Extract Coffee and a menu of hand-created signature hot sandwiches, salads and daily changing main dishes in a building dedicated to supporting the next generation of goldsmiths. Artisan cakes and breakfast patisserie are all available from 8am on the café’s ‘bench’, a large table in the centre of venue.
Photography by Warren King Photography, The Goldsmiths’ Centre, 2015
About Gather & Gather
Operating throughout the UK, Gather & Gather focuses on providing flexible and contemporary catering services as a standalone caterer or as part of an integrated facilities management model.
Catering facilities can make or break the effectiveness of a workplace and great food and drink can help drive productivity, improve staff morale, and maximise competitive advantage. That is why food and people are at the heart of the Gather & Gather ethos.
The team works hard to gather exciting new ideas, suppliers, ingredients, recipes and concepts in local and international markets, reinventing them so customers can gather and enjoy them.
Gather & Gather is part of Mitie Group, the FTSE 250 strategic outsourcing company.
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