Members Stories

CHEFS AND CHEQUES

October 5, 2026

One of the things we love most about We Back Bristol is that giving back doesn’t always look like a cheque. Sometimes it looks like a chef, an apron, and a menu built around what a room full of young people actually want to eat.

Food as an easy win

That’s exactly what’s happening at Felix Road Adventure Playground in Easton, where one of our founder businesses – Bianchis Group has teamed up with Eastside Community Trust to bring freshly cooked meals to Wavey Nights – their regular youth sessions for the local community.

The idea came about simply because Bianchis’ kitchen sits just behind Felix Road, and food had been flagged as a challenge for the sessions. For a restaurant group with kitchens on the doorstep, it was a natural fit – something they were already equipped to solve, without needing to build anything new.

The partnership is one of the first projects to come out of Studio Bianchi, a new arm of Bianchis Group built around using food, media and storytelling to support local causes across Bristol. Bianchis staff are volunteering their own time to cook for the sessions, with menus shaped directly around what the young people attending actually enjoy – not a fixed, generic offering.

It’s a good reminder of what a 1% pledge can actually look like in practice. It isn’t only cash. For Bianchis, it’s chefs, time and skill, given directly to a community space that needed exactly that.

More than a meal

Felix Road’s youth workers describe food as central to making the space feel welcoming – and that a meal made with care tells young people they matter, not just that they’ve been fed.

Bianchis Group itself has deep roots in East Bristol, shaped by a mix of Italian and Indian heritage alongside a lifelong love of the city. As one of the team put it: “We are Bristol boys, but with Italian and Indian heritage.” That’s the same blend of local pride and global flavour now showing up on plates at Felix Road.

And the young people themselves have noticed. After one session, one of them summed it up in a way no press release ever could – the food, they said, felt like someone had made it just for them, and the garlic bread was, in their words, “banging.”

This is exactly the kind of thing We Back Bristol exists to make more of. Bristol’s community spaces don’t just need funding – they need businesses willing to show up, again and again, with whatever they’re best placed to give. For a restaurant group, that’s food, kitchens and chefs’ time. For another business, it might be something else entirely. That’s the point.