Foodstory cafe in Aberdeen is offering a free traybake to anyone who donates unused crockery.
The business is looking for any mugs, cups, plates or bowls that people don’t use anymore to help stock up its newly-reopened zero waste cafe in Old Aberdeen.
In exchange for bringing in 10 items, you’ll be rewarded with a Foodstory classic – a salted caramel brownie.
What kind of things does it need?
Any sort of bowls, mugs, cups or plates will be accepted – they don’t need to be matching or brand new.
They just need to be clean and ready to use.
“Ideally if anyone has stacks of reusable coffee cups with lids, they would be ideal,” said Foodstory co-founder Sandy McKinnon.
“Takeaway containers which aren’t plastic would also be brilliant.
“But that would be in an ideal world and I understand these are things people like to hold on to.
“Really, we are just looking for anything which we can use in the café to serve food and drink.”
Why is Foodstory asking for donations?
Foodstory doesn’t need donations because it is unwilling to splash the cash on brand-new crockery.
Instead, the idea behind the plan is to save old and unused items from ending up in landfill.
All the items donated will be used in Foodstory’s newly reopened cafe in Old Aberdeen, which used to be called Foodstory Zero but has been renamed Foodstory Uni (because it’s located within the Aberdeen University campus).
The original name Zero came from the cafe’s ethos of producing zero waste, and although the name has changed this ethos remains.
“We only have one bin at the uni cafe which is a food waste bin which gets collected once every two weeks,” said Sandy.
“We don’t have any sort of single use packaging on the premises except the cartons that our alternative milks come in, and we are trying to find a supplier to get these in glass bottles.”
That means when you buy a coffee, it won’t come in a takeaway cup and your lunch won’t be boxed up in a cardboard carton.
Instead, when you buy a coffee to go and don’t have your own reusable cup, you’ll be given it in a real mug which you can take with you (and hopefully return at a later date).
Not the perfect business model… yet
Sandy says that the cafe does lose sales because of its reluctance to use any sort of disposable packaging.
“If they are buying a takeaway coffee, some people just don’t want to get it in a cup without a lid,” said Sandy.
“I can understand that and we have lost sales because of it, so it’s not the perfect business model.
“But we are learning a lot from this model and customers are very open to change, particularly since covid, and students at the university are always great at being early adopters of things.”
You can drop off any items at Foodstory’s main cafe on Thistle Street in Aberdeen or at Foodstory Uni in the Taylor Building of Aberdeen University. Your free brownie can be collected from either location.
Conversation