“I am really pleased Kada was able to make a donation of £1,000 towards the new oven at the Archer Project as part of our CSR activities which we take seriously. It is such a vital piece of equipment and after many months of fundraising I am so pleased to see we have met our target and had the oven installed. It was a pleasure to serve the first breakfasts to Sheffield’s homeless people this morning with the Cathedral Archer Project team.” Karl Dalgleish, Director of Kada Research 

The new oven will provide over 400,000 meals for vulnerable and homeless people in Sheffield.

Sheffield based Kada has a long-standing relationship with the Cathedral Archer Project, which provides support and care for local homeless and vulnerable people. A hugely important part of this support is the provision of fresh, hot food, which is vital for people’s physical and mental health. COVID-19 has presented a particular challenge to everyone, but to vulnerable people in particular – during the first lockdown, the project was providing almost 200 meals every day.  

However, the old combination oven used to prepare those meals has been failing. Having had it fixed several times in the space of a few months, it became clear that a new one was going to be needed in order to keep providing vital meals during lockdown. Good commercial ovens are expensive and the team have struggled to raise the funds required. Kada was pleased to be able to donate £1,000 toward the £7,000 cost of a new oven. It is now finally installed and ready to go just in time for both a cold winter and the 30th anniversary of the Cathedral Project. Karl was glad to join the team to help serve the first few breakfasts from the newly installed oven. 

The oven won’t just be providing food to vulnerable people. The team at the Cathedral Archer Project have been working hard to develop social enterprises in order to provide people with work experience and connections to local business. Have successfully built up a cleaning and printing enterprise, they have now been trialling a small cake bakery to supply cakes to local businesses. The new oven will put them in a much better position to build that trial up into a full social enterprise to benefit homeless and vulnerable people. 

With an expected lifetime of 12 years, the oven should provide in excess of 200,000 hot cooked breakfasts and the same number of lunches to the most vulnerable people in Sheffield. Having good-quality equipment puts the Cathedral Archer Project in a strong place to be resilient in unforeseen circumstances, such as the global pandemic we are currently facing.   

“I love our new oven. It will be used 6 days a week and is so versatile, just what we need feeding the numbers we do. During the pandemic lockdown we were providing nearly 200 meals every day and an oven like this just makes catering so much easier.” Tim Renshaw, Chief Executive of the Cathedral Archer Project