Maidstone school keeping students on track with train carriage for canteen

KentOnline / KMTV

For one school in Maidstone, school dinners are set to take place in a newly transformed train carriage that has been turned into a fully functioning cafe.

Transcript

00:00Students at the Five Acre Woods School in Maidstone are excited as a train carriage

00:04brought onto their grounds has been transformed into a fully functioning café, which is set

00:09to open this September.

00:11The project has received backing from several businesses, including the nationwide coffee

00:15house chain Costa Coffee, which has agreed to provide coffee beans and machines for them

00:20to use.

00:21Once the café opens, older students will be able to prepare, serve and sell drinks

00:25and light snacks to the public.

00:28The school also aims to offer quality takeaway and delivery, as well as an eat-in service.

00:33Headteacher Tim Williams is currently planning the curriculum that will be used alongside

00:37the roles in the café.

00:39So this is one of my favourite features, one of, not my only, features in the train carriage

00:44and it's the beautiful timeline of the transformation, but also our work on the project.

00:49And you can see at one end we've got the initial discussions with Mike Littleboy, Chair

00:54of Stones in the Community Trust, and the conversation was very much around, we want

00:59to do something different.

01:00I want to have something more than a hut that serves tea and coffee.

01:05And Mike came up with a train carriage, so I love that part of it.

01:09And then we go through to August, where it was craned in, in August 2023, by a specialist

01:15team made up of amazing people from Legacy Rail, Resource Rail and so on, all the way

01:21through to the present time.

01:25And I think what's amazing about this is the timeline will probably grow and we will probably

01:29have more photos and more images in future as the next phases of this project take place.

01:37With the café being close to completion and the school working with Costa to give their

01:41managers barista training, the students eagerly look forward to cutting the ribbon on the

01:45café's official unveiling on September 27th.

01:49So we had the carriage delivered in August time last year, work commenced in January

01:54this year, with an aim to have our official opening in September the 27th.

02:01So we have some quite important people coming from Costa Coffee, hopefully the CEO, the

02:06BBC I think want to come and be involved.

02:09There's quite a lot of people here that will be coming here to see the carriage in its

02:15final state from when we started back in January, as I say, this year.

02:20Robert Isaacson for KMTV.

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