Big Plates Cafe
Big Plates is a Community Cafe project in South East London. We serve healthy, delicious, home-cooked food - all for free! Our goal is to create open spaces where people can relax, meet new people and share a meal, without any financial barrier. We cook primarily using food that would otherwise go to waste, and we love to experiment with different cuisines.
Big Plates is run by squatters from squatted buildings. This means the cafe is run out of unused commercial buildings that we repurpose into accessible space for the community. As we see it, London is full of empty buildings serving no function other than as financial assets for wealthy landowners. Meanwhile, our community centres and libraries are closing and many people are struggling to access basic resources such as food and housing. We want to take back space by opening up buildings for social use; why should a building be empty, when it can be turned into a free cafe for everyone to enjoy?
Of course, wealthy landlords donāt tend to agree with us on that oneā¦ so the location of the cafe may change every few months. We will keep this website updated with the current location and opening times and we are working on more ways to stay in touch with the community so you know when we are open.