A new party catering service run by reformed prisoners is changing lives, finds Bruce Millar...
It might sound implausible that hiring a catering company to feed a crowd can not only guarantee delicious food for your function but also directly help some of our society’s most needy individuals – while at the same time saving the taxpayer significant sums of money.
But this is exactly what happens when you place an order with Catered by Clink, a social enterprise launched this year to train and employ inmates in Down View women’s prison near Sutton and prisoners on day release at an industrial estate in Herne Hill.
Catered by Clink
“Yes, we’re ticking a lot of boxes at the same time – that’s partly why we’re growing so quickly,” says Jonny Whitfield, who heads the new operation.
Whitfield is a trained chef who rose through the ranks from the smart Wolseley restaurant in the Strand to running high-end catering operations before joining the Clink Charity, which works with the prison service to rehabilitate offenders and prepare them for jobs in hospitality or horticulture.
“As I tell our students [the term he uses for the prisoners he works with], my highest qualification is an NVQ level 3, which is exactly what we’re training them towards. Hospitality can take you in so many directions.”
The Clink Charity was founded in 2009, and is in many ways the perfect vehicle to tackle national crisis situations in two areas – the prison system, which is bursting at the seams and has always struggled to provide rehabilitation, and the hospitality industry, where the perennial problem of finding skilled staff has grown even more challenging since Brexit cut off the supply of young Europeans looking for work in British hotels and restaurants.
Clink is best known for its award-winning restaurant and bakery at HMP Brixton, which is open to the public, but it also runs training kitchens at prisons across the country. Its Clink Events division is a well-established operation that provides top-end catering to large gatherings at famous venues including the Design Museum, the City of London’s Guildhall and Westminster Abbey.
The new Catered by Clink works on a smaller scale, delivering breakfast, lunch and canapé boxes to homes and offices in Greater London and Surrey.
Catered by Clink
It’s designed to feed 10 or more guests at competitive prices – suitable for a working breakfast, a family birthday, or a sports club awards night. The public-facing divisions operate as social enterprises, paying proper wages and generating profits which are returned to the charity.
Clink is a rare charity that can put a direct monetary value on the work it does. Graduates of its training schemes are 60% less likely to reoffend when they leave prison, which means every £1 invested saves the taxpayer £4.80 – an astonishing figure. As taxpayers, we spend a collective £80 billion a year on the prison system.
Each prisoner costs us about £60,000 a year – rising to £180,000 a year for young offenders.
As Whitfield points out sardonically: “It would be cheaper to lock them up in a five-star hotel room for the year and feed them via room service.”
Catered by Clink
Striking a more positive note, he adds that prisoners are “just people like us” and deserve a second chance. In many cases they simply made a bad decision early in life – they are often ambitious and full of potential, but had had no settled family life as children, no examples of conventional employment around them.
So why is Clink so successful at reforming former offenders? Partly, Whitfield suggests, because of the nature of work in hospitality.
“We all enjoy food,” he says. Cooking is a satisfyingly artisanal skill that most of us can learn. It does not require a high level of academic education – although you do need basic literacy and maths to follow recipes, food safety warnings and the like. It is also sociable, involving teamwork in the kitchen and – for those on the service side – interaction with members of the public.
But what makes the Clink Charity special – and especially effective – is the work of its support staff. Many ex-offenders have never written a CV or attended a job interview, so Clink helps prepare them for their first employment in the outside world, matching up each individual with the right role.
Catered by Clink
“A fast-paced job in a five-star hotel kitchen is not for everyone,” Whitfield says. “They might be more suited to working in a small café, or a quiet country pub, or a corporate environment which sticks to a rigid timetable.”
Crucially, the support does not end here. Clink staff keep in close contact to help iron out any problems students may have with adapting to the regime.
The charity has had some spectacular successes. One prisoner claimed to have been the best drug dealer in Cardiff before his conviction. Once behind bars, experience in a Clink kitchen ignited a passion for cooking and a new ambition: to become the best chef in Cardiff. A few years and several jobs later, he was appointed head chef at a top hotel in the city.
“He even got in touch with us and asked to be mentored for his new leadership role,” says Whitfield.
Clink’s success is not measured only in Michelin stars, or by the number of graduates who have set up their own coffee shops or cocktail bars to become their own boss. Most do find jobs in professional kitchens, but for others cooking is more of a life skill.
“We have students who have never really learned to cook before and just want to be able to cook better for their families when they’re released.”
Catered by Clink
For the employer, a Clink graduate offers real advantages, too. Many standard hospitality staff are permanently on the lookout for the next job opportunity and are prone to walk out in a huff at the first sign of pressure, whereas Clink graduates are often grateful simply to have a job and are looking for stability – while their support officer is at hand to help smooth over any friction.
Clink’s new Herne Hill unit is big enough to accommodate its planned expansion over the next five years, and has allowed it to develop another arm with the launch of an on-site café open to the public and staffed by vulnerable young people at risk of becoming offenders. In this case, the aim is prevention of crime rather than rehabilitation.
A casual visitor to the Herne Hill facility would assume it is just a standard catering operation: upstairs, back office of staff at computers, taking and placing orders with suppliers, negotiating sales, handling enquiries and HR, plus a dining room where prospective clients can do tastings. Downstairs are the kitchens, a buzz of activity under the direction of professional chefs.
In fact, the name of the business is the only real clue that something beyond catering is also happening here.
“Everyone is paid the London Living Wage – that’s very important. At outside events, we’ll have students alongside agency staff who just see them as colleagues as they work together – it’s great to hear them chatting away.”
And for the customer, delicious food with an invisible extra ingredient – the care that went into its cooking is truly beneficent.
