Mission: To provide training and employment experience to service users with learning disabilities enabling them to access other employment, training and educational opportunities..

Cana Coffee Shop is open to the public every Friday at the United Reformed Church on Fisherton Street in Salisbury.  The Coffee Shop provides training and employment experience for a number of adults with learning disabilities, who work with Salisbury College to gain their basic Food Hygiene Certificate.  Cana sell’s homemade cakes, freshly filled rolls and refreshments.  Provision of cakes and rolls can be made to order to local businesses.  The Coffee Shop is a project run with funding from South Wilts Mencap and Wiltshire County Council.

Cana Coffee Shop is now CLOSED - our new training cafe is Café Alabaré

Café Alabaré, which is open to the public, provides training and work experience to vulnerable adults. 

It came about as a result of the merging of Alabaré’s Cana Coffee Shop and the Endless Life Café.  Cana Coffee Shop was a training café for people with learning disabilities.   It operated one morning a week from the United Reform Church, providing refreshments and homemade cake to the public.  Demand for places on the training programme was so high that Alabaré wanted to expand and develop the service and the opportunity arose to take over the running of the former Endless Life Café.

Café Alabaré has been completely refurbished and offers training and work experience to a total of 12 vulnerable adults five days a week.  Each trainee will receive personalised training based upon their own personal aims and goals and there will be the chance to work towards recognised accredited qualifications. 

The café will be run as a social enterprise.  A social enterprise is “a business or service with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners”.

Customers can expect to enjoy wonderful food made from ethically sourced ingredients, which can be eaten in or taken away.  It is hoped that eventually the ingredients used will be grown on Alabaré allotments at the Barford Countryside Unit. And it is not just food on offer, customers also have the chance to view and buy locally hand-crafted goods, which are on display inside the café.