Red Dove Experience Cafe at Bunbury Uniting
Rev Greg Ross, Minister at St Augustine Uniting Church in Bunbury tells the story of the Red Dove Experience Cafe, a church and community partnership in Bunbury seeking to enable people of all abilities to learn hospitality, food preparation and barista skills in a supportive environment.
Article first published in the August 2025 edition of Revive magazine.
Last year, Thrive Mission Committee approved the most recent Mission Plan for Bunbury St Augustine Uniting Church. The Mission Plan is grounded on our Mission Statement ‘To be the Church that welcomes and inspires all people so that they are empowered to use their talents to serve God’s Mission.’ The work of each of our four ministry areas have two areas to focus on in the coming three years. One of these is developing a sustainable Mission Enterprise.
In early 2024 I had discussions with one of the young professional women in our church who with her husband runs an Allied Health practice that seeks to enable people of all abilities to live to their full potential. Their company offered very basic home skills training that included food preparation and resulted in them running a small ‘cafe experiment’ for their staff once a week. They were looking for a next step for their clients and so we trialed the staff bringing some clients in to provide afternoon tea once a week to our community craft group. This was an amazing success for the clients, for the community craft group and for our church.
Praying, puzzling and conversations continued as I had met Rev Ruth-Mary Bond from South Australia on a number of occasions and was aware of her ‘Experience Cafe’ that has been running successfully in Adelaide for well over a decade. This program provides ‘Cafe Training’ in a real cafe setting for young people, for migrants, for differently abledpeople, for people retuning to the workforce or seeking to gain skills for employment. Participants leave or graduate with certificates of competency in areas of hospitality such as Food Handling, Barista Training, Front of House, Wait Staff Training and Kitchen Hands etc. I contacted Ruth-Mary and she sent us all the materials for setting up an Experience Cafe. We read through and talked long and hard, and with Church Council approval decided to work towards trialling our Bunbury ‘Experience Cafe’ in 2025.
This required: re-registration of our church kitchen to allow us to sell food, purchase of some new equipment, ensuring all our kitchen volunteers had completed Level One Food Handling Certification and clearing one day a week in the bookings for our buildings. All of this was done, and we had a very soft launch of the Red Dove Experience Cafe in February with the official opening on 7 May with a ribbon cutting by the staff and clients and a special cake to celebrate.
A day at the Red Dove Experience Cafe (our registered name) begins with one of the church members or staff purchasing food requirements on the way into the church and then at 9.00am, the Allied Health staff, clients and church volunteers arrive. Tables are set with bright cloths, flowers, menu’s, napkin holders and food preparation of fresh sandwiches, muffins, biscuits, slice etc begins in the kitchen. Of course, our large coffee machine, dishwasher, hot water, oven, milk shake maker and toasters are all prepped and turned on and the cash register/Eftpos is brought out too.
A local musician arrives to play live music, and the doors open at 11.30am with quite a number turning up early for take aways. It’s the sounds of friendly welcomes, ‘hello and how are you?’, and ‘please find a table’, and ‘are you meeting someone?’ etc and the place fills the hall and into the church space until 1.30pm when the clean up and put away happens.
Some members of the community are now weekly attenders, people take time to write their prayers and hang them on our prayer tree, deep and meaningful conversations are happening and lots of fun and laughter too. Some people have reconnected with former students and colleagues, others are volunteering, others have made prepaid vouchers available to ensure everyone can eat without embarrassment. Groups of young people of all abilities and their families and carers make this their meeting place too. As one attender commented recently, “this is the church really serving the community”.
A few months ago ABC South West Radio’s Stan Shaw came to do a quick interview and stayed chatting with people for over an hour. He presented a wonderful on air segment in his breakfast program. The story was picked up by the South West Times newspaper who sent a reporter and photographer who featured us on their front page. Then the Bunbury Herald also shared the story. We’ve also done interviews on the local community radio. In July our local state member Minister Don Punch attended to offer his support.
In all of this we are witnessing people being welcomed, inspired and empowered to play their part in the Mission of God. Lives are being changed. People are encountering God in each other. The Good News of people living the inclusive way of Jesus is spreading and for this we are so very thankful.
