Meet the member:
The Sunshine Kitchen

The Sunshine Kitchen was launched around seven years ago. We were conscious that our son, who has autism and associated learning disabilities, was eventually going to come to the end of his time in education, and that there were not a lot of opportunities for him. We saw a gap in the available provision as traditional work placements only appeared to offer temporary support, which excludes a portion of society who have lifelong challenges requiring ongoing support. The aim of The Sunshine Kitchen is to provide substantial and meaningful work opportunities for young people who need that built–in support in order to gain confidence and independence in what they do. Most of our young people work across our kitchen and produce garden, several times a week, as well as undertaking customer-facing work on the market stalls.

We produce baked goods both sweet and savoury, that’s probably our main output from the kitchen, along with our preserves. What we hope makes them unique is that our products are a celebration of the produce we grow ourselves, married with really good quality recipes and technique. Our savoury items include quiches, potato tortillas, filled flatbreads, and savoury pastries, and can vary depending on what is in season. This month for example we have quiche featuring all the leafy summer greens growing in the garden, chives, fresh herbs and garlic. We’re currently growing aubergines, tomatoes, tomatillos, chillies, potatoes, courgettes, and more at our produce garden in Craigtoun Park, so customers can look forward to products on the stalls packed with those locally grown seasonal goodies in the weeks ahead.  Our sweet offerings range from Basque cheesecakes to muffins, brownies, cookies and more – this month’s stalls will feature Gooseberry Sponge and Blackcurrant Muffins. We seem to be very popular with customers at the local markets who want to pick up food for lunch or dinner over the weekend. We also make our own preserves and again, those are made according to what’s in season. Right now, we’ve been processing a lot of blackcurrants, gooseberries and redcurrants for example. We strive to use the best quality ingredients and to challenge the team with new techniques and exciting recipes.

The Sunshine Kitchen provides structured, tailored sessions and other work-based experiences for individuals with additional needs where they are fully supported to reach their potential and achieve maximum independence. Where some organisations may charge a fee for their services, or require the individual to attend with their own personal support, The Sunshine Kitchen provides everything at no cost to the individual, including professional in-house support. We also provide all workwear uniforms and equipment at our kitchen, in our garden or on the stalls. In our kitchen sessions, our recipes are adapted to include visuals which support our young people to grasp the content more instantaneously, working their way through the equipment and ingredient requirements much faster than they would if the document contained only text. Staff are trained to work by demonstration and to use visual prompts and short instruction to maximise understanding. We also believe that providing substantial placements where our young people work in both the kitchen and garden, and on the stalls, makes far more of an impact on their lives.

We recently developed a programme over a period of around nine weeks where a team of our young people went out to visit local producers to learn from them. Those visits included to the Fisher & Donaldson Bakery, to producers based at Bowhouse, and to Kingsbarns Distillery to name a few. The aim was for the team to spend one week learning, and then one week back in the kitchen developing ideas based on that new knowledge. This was a big success and the guys really enjoyed it a lot. It’s worth mentioning here that some of the connections we made, which made all of that possible, were certainly due to our membership of Food from Fife. We have also sent our staff on various training courses in the past, everything from breadmaking to food photography! The Sunshine Kitchen also offers work placements to young people who are at college studying subjects such as HNC Additional Support Needs. We offer them the opportunity to fulfil a remit of their studies by coming to work with us, providing training and insights relevant to their studies.

The most significant challenge we faced since starting The Sunshine Kitchen was losing the rented kitchen premises which we started off in, in the aftermath of COVID. This kitchen was originally located within the grounds of an educational institution, and, possibly, due to COVID policy at the time and other reasons, our occupancy was terminated, at a time when things were starting to open up again. That was a very worrying time for us, as our project is so dependent on a viable premises where our team can work effectively. Other challenges have included making a gradual transition from relying more heavily on volunteers in the early days, as we sought to build up a funding profile, to finding sufficient funds to move over to a model of operating mainly with paid staff. As with many charities, we started off on a volunteer footing with everyone initially pitching in, which can be difficult to sustain.

We have now transitioned to a model where we mostly operate with paid staff, but achieving that does not come without a lot of commitment and hard work. Fortunately, due to that, we have gradually continued to become more sustainable as well as attracting more support from funders to cover staffing and operating costs. And of course we do still have a great support network.

We overcame these challenges through building good relationships and partnerships in the area. And we probably also learned that hard work and perseverance pays off, if you believe in the goals you are striving for. The project is incredibly important to all of us, and we are very thankful to everyone who has supported it in many different ways.

We started off as a small pilot project with just a handful of young people. Now we provide places for approximately thirty young adults, operating throughout most of the week and across several weekends a month. In particular, the young people who started off with us initially are still with us. The biggest success story is seeing how much they have grown. They are so independent and confident, and they need so little support now. Watching them in the kitchen, they are like a well-oiled machine!

It’s very important to us. Reducing food miles, and teaching our young people how to grow and harvest produce and what it can be used for is key to our ethos. We grow most of our own produce, and from time to time, we are also contacted by other local growers and producers who have an excess of fruit or vegetables that they want to share with us. That’s where most of our produce comes from. For everything else, we use one local business, who makes weekly deliveries to the kitchen. We strongly believe in sourcing things locally.

Our main collaborations/partnerships are with OnFife Cultural Trust and Friends of Craigtoun Park. OnFife Cultural Trust provides amazing support with the kitchen premises we are based in. Not only is the organisation supportive of us as a whole, all of the staff that we come into contact with on a regular basis are all fantastic. We also have a valuable partnership with Friends of Craigtoun Park. They have made it possible for us to develop an area of the park into a working garden. We also do a cafe take-over at the park during the autumn/winter period, all made possible by this organisation. We also receive stellar support from Markets Between Two Firths, which is the company responsible for the monthly markets in Cupar and St Andrews.

We love developing new partnerships with other food producers and businesses, and so if anyone has any opportunities for our team to come along for a visit and learn something new, we would love to hear from them. In terms of members of the community, the best way to support us is to buy our food from the local markets in Cupar and St Andrews, or at Bowhouse, or to book catering for an event! The Sunshine Kitchen provides a catering service, which can include either delivery of cold platters, or in-person hot food service. We have been very fortunate to have been invited to provide catering for various local organisations ranging from University of St Andrews to East Fife Sports Council. Being asked to undertake ambitious catering work is a wonderful challenge for our young people and they absolutely thrive on it. As soon as an order goes out, they all want to know what the feedback was!

In terms of resources, I really think just having the ongoing and growing support and recognition of other businesses and organisations in Fife, is very valuable to us. The quality and provenance of our food products and our brand is close to our hearts, and any opportunities to promote that, in order to create new and interesting opportunities for our team is key. Whether it is the chance to attend a new event, provide catering or supply a local business with food, we are always grateful for new possibilities. The other type of support is, of course, financial. Staffing costs are naturally our highest expenditure due to the level of in-house professional support which the project is built upon, and we are always seeking individuals or organisations who are interested and willing to pledge donations. This can be done through our website where there is a Donations page, or by contacting us directly to discuss.

Provide more places for young people who want to work and who need a supportive, inclusive environment in order to be able to do so. And to continue to establish our brand as a sought-after food producer in Fife!

Our quiches are definitely the most popular. We usually sell out of those at all of our markets, and have recently started to see customers contacting us to order whole quiches which they can collect from the stalls. Our guys are expert quiche-makers at this point! They make their own pastry and all the varieties we sell on the stalls are packed with seasonal produce from the garden. Why does it resonate with our customers? I think it’s something people like to pick up for lunch or dinner. And we’ve put a lot of work into developing some really tasty flavours. They are very good quality, and also good value.

We plan to launch online ordering from our website later this year so we are excited about that. We usually sell a lot of products over the festive period – gift packs of preserves, Christmas cakes and hampers – and we want to try to make this more streamlined in terms of advance ordering, and more convenient for our customers. It will also be possible for customers to buy fresh items for delivery or collection throughout the year.