‘Food is a brilliant way of bringing people together’

Squash, a community hub in Liverpool, is helping to incubate food entrepreneurs, Hazel Sheffield writes

Becky Vipond and Clare Owens started Squash in 2007 (Hazel Sheffield)

Fozia Choudhry has always loved cooking. At home in Liverpool she looks for excuses to bake a cake or make a curry. But until recently she felt stuck, unsure of what she could do for a living. She was even thinking of following in her husband’s footsteps and becoming a taxi driver. Then last year a friend told her about a cooking workshop at Squash, a food hub Liverpool 8, also known as Toxteth, south Liverpool.

“She said, ‘Come on, you need to do this!’” Choudhry remembers. “I didn’t know what to do with my life.” Today, Choudhry is one of 40 women to pass through a Women's Food Biz course at Squash. The programme, sponsored by the Workers’ Educational Association, invites unemployed women with an interest in food to test an idea for a food business and to train to work in the catering industry. Since completing the course, Choudhry works part time as a chef at the Squash cafe, making aubergine and potato curries and chickpea burgers. “It’s a beautiful place to work. My husband came in for the first time recently and said, ‘You’re in a good place here’."

Squash started in 2007 as a way for best friends Becky Vipond and Clare Owens to use food to bring people together within their community. Last year, Squash moved into its own eco-building, co-designed by the community, on Windsor Street. The building is now home to a cafe, a food shop, gallery space and a large garden for growing produce.

At the centre of Squash’s vision is the idea that food – the growing, cooking and eating of it – can build community. That is typical of many community businesses, according to Vidhya Alakeson, chief executive of Power to Change, a Lottery funded charity that supports the sector. Power to Change has supported Squash with community business funding for the shop and cafe worth £200,000.

“What is special about Squash is that, as well as producing healthy and nutritious food for its community, it uses food to bring people together to shape what it does as an organisation and [shape] the future of its neighbourhood.”

There are 7,800 community businesses operating in the UK, according to Power to Change, with a total market income of £1.05bn. A third of community businesses involve a cafe and training opportunities for staff, found a 2018 survey by the charity. Alakeson says: “Food is a brilliant way of bringing people together, getting conversations started and supporting people to get more engaged in the places where they live.”

The building on Windsor Street, with its tall ceilings and light-filled rooms, was five years in the making. Squash bought a neglected piece of land, once used as a dumping ground, from the council. Marianne Heaslip of URBED architects worked with 30 members of the community, using creative formats like collages and storytelling to communicate what people wanted from the space. “This meant we could involve as many people as possible in the conversation, and that the conversation itself was fun and creative,” Heaslip says. She used these ideas to design the building using low-impact materials, such as certified timber and recycled newspaper insulation.

The building was in the middle of construction in October 2015 when it was hit by a devastating fire. On the day of the fire, a local gardener came and got Owens from home. By the time she had driven down the road to see the blaze, she had already decided that nothing was going to stop them rebuilding. “When you have so many people involved, it’s not like you’re a commercial business on your own, it’s got everyone’s blood, sweat and tears. So there was no way that was going to stop us,” she says.

Within three weeks, Squash had raised more than £25,000 to start rebuilding. People were popping in with fivers, wanting to contribute something. A local school held a disco to raise money. “What came out of that was that everyone heard about it. We met people who we didn’t know had hope for the new building and what it was bringing to the area,” Owens says.

Choudhry was born in Granby in Liverpool. She says Squash, which finally opened in May 2018, has transformed the street. “Windsor Street was very run down,” she says. “Squash has brought employment into the area. And with the enthusiasm for the garden, a lot of volunteers come in, it’s very positive.”

Earlier this year, Choudhry was in the kitchen when judges for the BBC Food and Farming Awards visited the store. Just a few weeks later, on 12 June, Squash was recognised at the awards ceremony in Bristol, where it won the best shop.

“Our team were over the moon,” Owens says. Local people are popping in again – this time to touch the trophy: an engraved oak chopping board. “We have had a hard slog and the community have pulled together. It’s a restorative thing for us.”

Next, the team are focussing on their 100-year plan: a “slow project” to involve residents in growing food on the street. They got the idea from planting apple and pear trees that live for 100 years in a former pub car park that has become the Grapes Community Food Garden. Squash is also looking for funding to continue its women’s food business programme so more women can benefit.

Choudhry is one of three women to be directly employed by Squash after going through the programme. Another, Asia Afinogenova, was working in retail when she moved to Liverpool a few years ago, until she took time off to have her first child. “I was at home a lot,” she says. “Now I feel really confident. I met lots of totally new people.”

Through the programme, Afinogenova learned how to register her kitchen with an environmental health officer. She started a business: Zakwas, which means sourdough in Polish. She has plans to open her own bakery one day.

“I would like to have a cafe with not only bread, but cakes and focaccia,” she says. Recently her husband thought he had found the perfect place for their business, but when he called up it was unavailable. But they will keep looking, she says, and in the meantime Afinogenova will keep baking. “I know how it is now. Sometimes in the kitchen not everything works, but you shouldn’t doubt yourself. You can keep trying.”