The Magic Hat Cafe is “Newcastle’s city centre’s first and only coffee shop, kitchen and events venue dedicated to challenging UK food waste.”
Each year 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted, which is roughly a third of the world’s total food. And 2023 is on course to reach this target, with 1.1 billion tons wasted so far this year. A staggering 35% of this wasted food is purposefully thrown away; perfectly safe and nutritious food, thrown out by supermarkets and households.
The Magic Hat Cafe is trying to tackle just that. This revolutionary cafe uses surplus produce bought from local supermarkets, restaurants and shops in Newcastle and the Northeast that would of been wasted, thrown away and ended up in landfill. The Magic Hat really has become a signal of hope and change for food waste in Newcastle. The daunting statistics of food waste can be changed with dedication and effort.
Food waste contributes to our worsening environment and global climate. For example, creating all these foods requires land, pesticides, transport and lots of energy and then they are wastefully thrown away! Then, on top of this, these discarded goods create greenhouse gases when they decompose in landfills.
Every year, there is an estimated 3.3 billon tons of carbon dioxide released into our atmosphere, just from food waste’s carbon footprint alone. In a world with serve climate change, a growing population and over 800 million people already suffering from extreme hunger, we cannot afford this extent of food waste.
Our little northern saviour, The Magic Hat Cafe, is tucked behind the Laing Art Gallery on Higham Place. This hidden green gem was founded in 2015 by Jess Miller and Duncan Fairbrother, when they worked across Newcastle in community centres doing pop ups and outreach sessions. In 2021, Magic Hat found its current, permanent home, following the success of an online fundraiser which smashed its original 20k target during the pandemic.
The menu is constantly changing, due to its varying supply, which makes each and every visit to Magic Hat new and exciting. The amazing chefs create a fusion of classic cafe grub on the verge of fine dining for an affordable price. The cafe and kitchen is open between Thursday and Sunday, 10am to 4pm, but stays open until 9:30pm for Friday nights!
The cafe also avoids creating any surplus goods of its own by taking any food it can’t use to its local food bank and creating weekly food hampers to buy, which sell out incredibly quickly on The Magic Hat’s website.
Owner Jess Miller told The Chronicle: “Our true purpose is to do as much as we possibly can to reduce the world’s food waste – to zero. For us, we want to create affordable, high-quality food as we simply believe to tackle food waste, we need to be able to engage everyone, across sectors and across communities.”
On my visit to this little green oasis, I was met with a welcoming blanket of warm air and the rich smell of coffee on entry. With welcoming staff, communal tables and a dog-friendly policy the cafe really is a lively community hub. It was lovely to retire from the nippy November weather into such a friendly, warm environment. The menu was filled to the brim with enticing, attractive dishes but both the house blend ice tea and the beef and lamb kofta really caught my eye (pictured below).
The meal was absolutely delicious, filling and the flavours were so fresh. You never would have known this food was destined for the landfill. And on today’s menu, the prices ranged from £6-£11, so the Magic Hat is perfect for my fellow environmentally conscious students who want to live a greener lifestyle but struggle to afford that pesky, upmarket green price tag.
The Magic Hat is worth a visit as this one-of-a-kind cafe is laying the foundations for less food waste in Newcastle. The global issue of food waste is a majorly extensive problem , that is having a detrimental impact on our environment and population every day. However with revolutionary actions, from people like Jess Miller and Duncan Fairbrother at The Magic Hat Cafe, we can see that change is possible.
We’ve all got to do our bit, so whether it’s just remembering to use that last crust of bread, buying reduced food on its ‘best before’ date or simply buying less because you’ll never finish all that chicken chow mein from your local Chinese anyway. We can all follow in The Magic Hat’s footsteps and use more to waste less in order to tackle our global issue of food waste.
To visit The Magic Hat Cafe, Click Here.
To learn more about food waste, Click Here.