A new street food event at a city car park has raised over £10,000 for The Norwich Soup Movement in its first three weeks, through discretionary donations added to online orders.
Junkyard Market launched outside St Mary’s Works, with the entrance off Duke Street, on August 14 and is a seven-week long event, running every Friday 5pm to 10pm and Saturday and Sunday 12pm to 10pm.
Each day there are two or three sittings and customers order and pay online from their tables, which seat up to six, and food and drinks are brought over by staff.
When customers go to pay, a £1 discretionary charge is added to the bill for The Norwich Soup Movement, a non-profit organisation that gives food, clothes and other assistance to the homeless.
READ MORE: Take a first look at Norwich’s new street food market
The event has been organised by AfterDark Promotions, who run events across East Anglia, The Shoe Factory Social Club, who offer free warehouse space to local creatives at St Mary’s Works, and developers Our Place, behind the multi-million pound regeneration project planned for the venue.
There is a mix of local and national street food vendors, which varies each week, and it has included Norwich-based companies Christophe’s Crepes, Ronaldo Ices and Wok Box.
Woodforde’s Brewery serve pints from The Norfolk Beer Engine and there are also local wines, cocktails and London brewer Jubel offers peach, elderflower and grapefruit craft beer on tap.
The organisers have been overwhelmed by the kindness of people coming to the Junkyard Market and also by how well the event as a whole has gone so far.
Michael Femi-Ola, AfterDark Promotions operations manager, said: “It has been really good, we had some teething issues when we first launched in terms of speed of service, but everything is coming into its own now and we’ve taken on board people’s suggestions to make it better.
“We had a target in mind for raising £20,000 for The Norwich Soup Movement by the end of the project, so to do £10,000 in three weeks is great.”
The event is free to attend and you can book at junkyardmarket.co.uk
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