Phoenix Community Kitchen is the first stage of a community food project  ‘Str-Eat’, launched and organized by the Phoenix Resource Centre.

The Phoenix Community Kitchen is a co-dependent initiative within the ‘Str- Eat’ project and operates on the fundamental core ethos of the Phoenix Resource Centre: environmental protection through national and local resourcing, upcycling, reallocation, repurposing and redirection of surplus. The Community Kitchen uses surplus food, supplies and products to provide a free breakfast to anyone who needs it, and has the ultimate objective of building a self-sustaining community hub around food. 

From its site in The Harvey Centre, Harlow, the Phoenix Community Kitchen provides a space that is open to all who may need or want to grab a free breakfast made up of cereal, toast and a hot or cold drink. Its immediate aim is to address a rising need in the Harlow Community for help with food shortages and hunger - especially among school children, the elderly, and those hit by harsh economic times. It aspires to achieve long term community engagement through generational, economic, gender and racial integration and inclusion, simply by being able to sit down around a table and start the day the right way with breakfast.

In early September, The Phoenix community kitchen will start a small lunch time offering. This will be an affordable chargeable offering. To include baked Potatoes with various toppings, Sweet Waffle options, Smoothies, Tea and coffee. All the proceeds will go towards the long term sustainability of the free breakfast project and the preparation stages of the Str-Eat project.

The Phoenix Community Kitchen has extended its outreach by engaging with other community and outreach organisations to ensure that the benefit of having a free breakfast available can be accessible to those parts of the community that are harder to reach or that cannot easily get to The Harvey Centre.  Current partnerships include Community Embrace, Harlow Ethnic Minority Umbrella (HEMU) Harlow Anglican Churches, Potter street Baptist church and MakingItMindfulUK.

In addition, Phoenix Community Kitchen has taken an active approach to work directly with schools so that free cereal can be provided to children in breakfast and holiday clubs throughout the year.