St Luke’s Church is established for exclusively charitable purposes: primarily for the advancement of religion and to provide benefit to the community through faith shared in words and actions. They received business support from us to build a sustainable business and operational model for Peace ‘n’ Jam: a community café project.
Social Impact
There’s nothing like a good old cuppa and a chat to bring together a community.
And the plans for Peace ‘n’ Jam community cafe will do just that: creating a place to foster relationships and bring the community together, where young and old can share time and gain valuable experiences and skills; and provide opportunities to work together with and promote local projects.
How we helped
St Luke’s Church required help in planning the café development and, more specifically, introducing a business plan which was required prior to the submission of the stage 2 application form. We worked with the group to re-profile the financial model created for the Stage 1 bid, helping the group to develop skills to use an adaptable spreadsheet-based model to plan the operation themselves.
We went back to first principles with the business model, revisiting the underlying assumptions made at Stage 1 (such as customer numbers, staff requirements, spend per cover), and building the group’s confidence in the new operational and financial assumptions, focussing on business assumptions for a community café in a deprived area.
We worked together on a model that would allow the St Luke’s team to run different scenarios for staff working hours, fees and charges and customer numbers on a month-by-month basis. Once the model was built, we left them to work though several scenarios themselves, which helped to build confidence and skills.
What was the outcome?
Over the few months of support, we have arrived at an evidence-based business and operational model which the project team is comfortable to deliver. The team also now have the skills to continue to use the model into the future, adapting it as required.
Using the financial model as a base, we worked together to develop a business plan for the café. In addition to being a technical piece of business work, the development support has also been about building confidence and business skills.
It is important to note that this project will not be a standalone commercial venture at any point and providing reassurance to the team about this has been important. We have developed an approach to sustainability that includes Peace ‘n’ Jam supplementing its café income with a package of mixed funding, including grant funding, individual donors and corporate support, as well as creating new ventures that fit with the project’s vision and objectives. A welcoming community hub lies ahead for St Luke’s Church and Glenrothes in the form of Peace ‘n’ Jam.
