Meet the business - Homestead Cafe

This series introduces the various businesses that operate from Beckenham Place Park. The Homestead Cafe is open 7 days a week in the Homestead Courtyard.

Hello, what’s your name, what do you do and what company do you represent? 

Fraser Mills, Café Owner, The Homestead Café

What does The Homestead Café offer park visitors?

The Homestead Café offers great coffee, stone-baked pizza, home-made cakes, freshly baked pastries, breakfast brioches, ice cream from an organic Cotswolds dairy, locally brewed craft beer and a warm welcome

When did The Homestead Café join the businesses in the park?

July 2019

What attracted you or the business to Beckenham Place Park?

The woodpeckers and the beautiful trees

How many people does The Homestead Café employ?

The Homestead Café employs approximately 30/35 full or part-time staff

What is your most popular product or service?

 Our Red Brick flat whites are very popular

Tell us about your efforts to make your business more eco-friendly.

We employ a part-time sustainability manager who keeps us pushing forward gently. We are currently researching a small commercial digestor to turn our waste cardboard into organic mulch.

Tells us about a community project you’ve engaged with in Beckenham Place Park

At the moment we provide cardboard (again) to Grow Lewisham which is a Downham based charity that provides support, guidance and an allotment to help locals grow their own food. We have also cooked soup and provided surplus fruit and vegetables to a local Downham food bank.

Can you share one fact about your company that most people don’t know about?  

When we initially opened our café we had a wall of polaroid pictures of customers and their dogs. As the Homestead Café is now take away only, we’ve migrated the photos onto a digital platform, hence @dogsofthehomesteadcafe on Instagram

Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

We are now part of the '1% For The Planet' organisation.