The Bench Cafe

The Bench Cafe is a community social-enterprise cafe on King Street in Gravesend that originally opened in April 2013 on a 'pay-what-you-can' model. It was set up by the Communities Food Community Interest Company with European Social Fund backing, doubling as a training scheme that gave unemployed local residents work experience and qualifications in food hygiene and customer service before job interviews at Bluewater shopping centre.

Much of its food was sourced from supermarket surplus and packaging-damaged stock to cut waste and keep prices low, and it has been associated with The Gr@nd community venue and the FareShare-supported food network. As a small community/training cafe its public review footprint is limited, so customer sentiment cannot be reliably characterised.