SILVER City Christian Revival Crusade (CRC), a Pentecostal church community in Broken Hill, runs a community cafe every Tuesday aiming to offer an accessible and affordable experience for all.
The cafe is self-funded and volunteer-run, besides from initial funding received from the Y’s Men Club to set the cafe up 18 months ago.
These volunteers allow the cafe to offer lower prices for food and drink, and therefore an accessible outing for those with less disposable income.
Senior Pastor of Silver City CRC and cafe manager Jessie Heidenreich said the idea of the cafe was to make it as cheap and accessible as possible, with lunch specials costing just $8.
“The cafe offers scones with jam and cream, fruit plates for kids and toasted sandwiches; a lot of stuff is made in-house,” Ms Heidenreich said.
“We’ve had times that people have tapped their card and it hasn’t gone through and they’ve said ‘can I jump in the kitchen and do some dishes?’ and I’ve said ‘yeah sure’, so it is very relaxed in that way.”
Ms Heidenreich said the cafe aimed to be affordable enough for young families and elderly people to visit weekly.
“I often get young parents comment that I’m not charging them enough, but we just really want to be able to bless people. I know that, for me, when my kids were younger, a good thing for my mental health was getting out of the house,” she said.
“So we provide toys, have a kid-friendly menu and try make the food really affordable, because as much as it’s nice to get out the house as a mum, you can’t really afford to be dropping $50 on lunch every day either, just to be out and about.
“One of customers is a lady with twin daughters, they’re about to turn one, and she’s been coming to the cafe since they were three months old, and we also have a gentleman who’s 94 and comes in for lunch every week.
“They’re our oldest and youngest regulars!”
The CRC Community Cafe is also entering 2025 with new goals.
“We are looking at different ways that people would be able to come and access a free meal without anyone realising that’s what they’ve done,” Ms Heidenreich said.
“We are looking at trying to get vouchers out to other organisations in the community, like Second Bite for example, so that people could come with one of those vouchers and no one would even realise they have had a free meal.
“I’m having preliminary conversations with people about that at the moment.”
