Trainee Luke has recently passed his Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) in Professional Cookery, an achievement he has worked very hard for.  He was proud to show off his certificate, as was everyone else at The Usual Place proud of his achievement. Luke has decided to stay with The Usual Place and move on to his […]

Last night, The Usual Place had their Christmas Night in. Staff, trainees and volunteers were treated to a meal from the chip van before hitting the dance-floor for a night of fun. It was a night enjoyed by all who attended!  Scroll down to see pictures from the event.        

Ben has received a Saltire Award for his work in volunteering! Ben, one of our volunteers, has clocked a massive 500 hours of voluntary work, some of which he earned while working at The Usual Place. This high number clearly shows Ben’s commitment and his hardworking nature, which we have seen at The Usual Place. […]

The Usual Place has entered Dumfries and District Flower Club’s Christmas Tree Festival! The tree has been decorated with hand-made decorations, which were made by our trainees.  The crafts we have as part of our tree include painted spoon baubles, paper apron baubles, paper-chain “tinsel” and more. If you would like to see our tree […]

We’d like to wish a big well done to Paul! Paul recently became Great British Tennis Champion!  This achievement has taken a lot of training and effort to gain, and we at The Usual Place are very proud of him. Paul brought in his medals to show us all his accomplishment.

The Usual Place is officially an accredited Living Wage Employer! This means that we have joined many other businesses across Scotland, and indeed the whole of the UK, who believe that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. It is important to us that everyone earns enough to live off of.

For the past several weeks, school pupils Dana, Lewis, Connor and Chloe have been gaining work experience at The Usual Place. The students have gained experience in all aspects of our cafe – working in the kitchen to prepare our meals, serving hot drinks and pastries and displaying customer service skills at front of house, […]

On Friday 15th November, Heather, Craig, Tony and Liz attended the SQA Star Awards ceremony at Kelingrove Art Museum. As you may have seen, we were nominated some weeks ago in the category of Partnership of the Year alongside Dumfries and Galloway College, which we won! Not only did we win in our category, we […]

Yesterday, school pupils Lewis, Dana, Chloe and Connor came to The Usual Place to learn more about us. They helped chop vegetables in the kitchen, ironed our aprons and worked in the shop all to our standards and then finished the day by attending a pizza making workshop with trainees Meg and Gavin. Well done […]

Today The Usual Place held a pizza making workshop for our trainees. This is an event we hold often and it is invaluable to the trainees as a teaching tool – and as an opportunity to have some fun! Today Meg and Gavin have been busy making their pizzas.  We are excited to see how […]