A café has shown it is at the heart of the community by serving up a free meal to the volunteers who help make the area a nicer place to live in

Café Chico, on St Helens Road, has been running for around a year and has already been named in the top five in the town.

The café invited in a group of volunteers from Over Hulton and gave them a free meal as a reward for the work done to a garden at a shopping precinct on Newbrook Road.

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The Over Hulton Community Group have transformed the area where they have been working for 14 years and do something different with it every year.

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Farook Mohamed, father of owner Aaliyah Mohamed, lives nearby.

He said: "They have improved it by about 110 per cent."

The business opened around a year ago, and the cafe has real character, with the owners keen to upcycle, including using old church pews inside.

Aaliyah says her mantra is to regenerate, reuse and renew the spot.

 

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Aaliyah said: “It is my first venture of this type.

“We want to be more than a business, we want to give back to the community.

“Seeing people come back regularly is the most rewarding thing.

“There are a lot of lonely people and it is somewhere they can come in for a chat.

“It is just brilliant when we get repeat customers.

“That is rewarding.”

"It has been a hard 12-months but we want to keep going

“We want to regenerate, reuse and renew.

“We want to start growing our own vegetables.

“This is the circular method where it goes from farm to fork.

“We are named as one of the top five cafes in Bolton and we were really impressed with that.”

John Bullen, from the community group, said: "Faruk lives opposite and said what we have done is brilliant.

"We have been working on it since 2010 and do different summer bedding each year so it always looks different.

"What a treat for our volunteer gardeners. Faruk, Fyroza and their daughter Aaliyah have been so bowled over with the garden and hanging baskets on our shopping precinct that they invited our volunteers to their newly opened café at Morris Green, Cfor a free brunch. What a fantastic way to show appreciation of the superb job our volunteers do! Thank you so much Faruk, Fyroza and Aaliyah for the invite to your lovely cafe"

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He added: "It's a cracking café and everyone who went loved it.

"It really is a lovely little café, with a wonderful atmosphere and decor. The owners could not make you feel more welcome. They really want to make it in to a community café.

"For those who haven't been, go."

The café serves vegan and gluten free products and does a breakfast as well as a lunch.

Popular items include the Full English Breakfast, Sourdough toast and sandwiches.

Drinks served include smoothies and Mango, Passion and Guava smoothies.