Crave, a not-for-profit cafe in Morningside, Auckland needs your help

Your local cafe – who gives all its profits back into the neighbourhood – is moving and needs us all to chip in to make it happen.

Crave has been given the most incredible opportunity to take our neighbourhood engagement to the next level. A generous landlord has offered to build us an amazing cafe on the corner of Auckland's Morningside Drive and McDonald Street. With triple the size floor space, all-day sun streaming indoors and out, 50 new chairs, and 25 carparks, it's going to be a good time for all. It also means that we'll be opening at night, three times a week, serving a delicious new menu and MorningCider.

Our new premises is just across the road, but it's going to make a huge difference. Soon, you'll be able to enjoy many more hours of sumptuous food, quality coffee and cool Morningside vibes. All we need to to is fit it out with equipment, tables, chairs and all the other things that make cafes awesome, to make it a reality.

Crave needs to find $300,000 to make the move work. We have raised $200k so far and are looking to the neighbourhood to help us get over the line. We have set an ambitious $50,000 crowdfunding goal, but we believe we can achieve this!

If you can give a little to us now, we will be able to give a whole lot back into the neighbourhood in the future. So please journey with us.

THE CRAVE STORY

Seven years ago there was a group of 12 of us living in this awesome neighbourhood called Morningside, and one day we asked ourselves: "How do we make this a better place to live?" We soon realised something – while there are a lot of great people in the area, there's not a lot to connect them together.

We chipped in and started Crave cafe, at 25 McDonald St, as part of our charitable organisation Crave Collective – that means that all of our profits go towards the community and helping destroy poverty of any kind. No extra money goes back to us. What we do get is the better neighbourhood we all want to live in. This seems like a good time to us.

So, why a cafe? One of the basic cravings of humanity is to connect with each other; we think outstanding fairly traded coffee and engaging conversations in scintillating environs is a brilliant way to connect.

And so what started out as a dream to be a neighbourhood cafe that connects people is now a reality. And now that reality has become bigger than we’ve ever imagined.

BIGGER & BETTER GOOD IN OUR 'HOOD!

Fast forward to 2015, and Crave cafe has been given an amazing opportunity to move bigger and better premises at 6 Morningside Drive. This will be triple the floor area of our current cafe, and allow us to grow into all the aspects that we dream of.

It also means we can spread much more good in the 'hood.

So, what does this phrase that we continue to spruik even mean? At its heart, this means we pour so much of our energy into neighbourhood engagement, from helping locals connect to helping our neighbours better themselves.

These include:

Street parties - We bookend summer with two street parties which involve closing off our street, putting up decorations, cooking some great food and inviting the neighbourhood over for dinner. We generally have around 500-600 people attend and engage with each one of these street parties. This is one way we encourage the neighbourhood to engage with each other.

Our popular street parties, creative soirees, art showings and games nights have revealed to us that neighbours, families and Crave friends want to get involved in community events. Come summer, the opportunities are endless for neighbourhood engagement: more street parties, more events, more ways to get to know our community.

Mental Health Consumers - We have a relationship with both St Lukes Community Health Centre and Frameworks, two local mental health providers. We run a suspended coffee system where customers can prepay for a coffee for those struggling with mental health in the neighbourhood. The coffee vouchers are given to the providers to distribute to their clients. The coffee cards are unmarked, maintaining the dignity and anonymity of those receiving them.

Art gallery - We showcase a different local artist in the cafe every six weeks, encouraging a creative and dynamic atmosphere. One of our previous artists was a man who came to us through the drug courts.

Produce for coffee swap - We swap homegrown produce bought into the cafe for a coffee. This is a way we encourage sustainability in the neighbourhood, and inspire people to grow things in their backyards, eliminating waste in the form of unneeded produce.

Global poverty - We have engaged with the organisations The Loyal Workshop and Freeset, both ‘freedom’ businesses in India, aiming to provide employment to women in the sex industry. We took a team from our neighbourhood to visit these organisations in India in 2013 and continue to raise money for the causes there.

As a direct result of this a small charity called MAD for Change was created to raise the profile of those freedom businesses in New Zealand. We aim to aid in this empowering of women in the red light districts in India, giving opportunities of finding freedom from the life they are enslaved to.

Youth at Risk - We have established a relationship with a local trust doing work with youth at risk and they are also the recipients of our suspended coffee program.

We also support local primary schools/creches/playgroups with their fundraising ventures.

With the new space, we can continue to grow these projects, and also have the capabilities to do so much more.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

We need $50,000 of community support to make this dream of bettering those around us in significant ways a reality... and give you an amazing cafe.

By giving a little, you can help bring so much good to this neighbourhood and our city.

THANK YOU

Cheers for taking the time to read about our story and dream to take Crave cafe to new heights, moving to an expansive site across the road so that we can reach more of our locals and be Morningside’s destination cafe. With your help, we can take neighbourhood engagement to epic levels.

And we’d like to thank you for supporting the local community to make this neighbourhood a better place to live, simply by living and giving a little with us.