The Dressing Room Café received national recognition last week picking up an award from the 15th Observer Food Monthly Awards. Winning by the OFM judges vote, the café took home the ‘Local Food Hero’ award, a category for businesses who have made a difference to the food industry in their own communities throughout the UK.
Since launching in Chorlton in April 2015, The Dressing Room Café, which is part of the Manchester Award Winning Theatre The Edge Theatre offers art space and runs a dedicated catering and restaurant training facility for adults with learning disabilities, each year working with 24 adults to deliver 12 week one to one tailored training placements.
Janine Waters, CEO & Artistic Director at The Edge Theatre, said: “Participation is at the heart of everything we do at The Edge, from opportunities taking part in our participation programme right through to our award-winning hospitality programme. We’re immensely proud of The Dressing Room and all the trainees that come to us to develop skills in our café, which is a busy and important part of our theatre space. For our project to win an award that, in our eyes, is one of the highest accolades in the food industry, is a huge honour and testament to our wonderful staff, partners and of course trainees.”
This will be the second award The Edge Theatre have received this year after support from Business Growth Programme, Excelerate labs.
Waters said: “The advice from Excelerate Labs has been helpful on so many levels. The work around helping me to understand Search Engine Optimisation has come at the perfect time to increase our website rankings on search engines”
