TasWeekend: Chow aplenty at Nobucks

WHITE tablecloths, flowers on the table and meals cooked with great pride and care ... It’s not the latest restaurant on the strip, but a kitchen of volunteers helping the needy.

Adge Ashcroft and Suzanne Vincent are two of the volunteers who help provide weekday lunches at Wesley Uniting Church for those who hae fallen on hard times. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE

SOMETIMES there really is such a thing as a free lunch.

Not only does Hobart charity Nobucks provide goodquality, home-style meals free of charge, with no strings attached, but the volunteers also have a policy of not asking anyone why they have come in or what their circumstances are.

They are happy to chat if a visitor starts the conversation, but they make a point of never prying or judging.

“It’s an open door, simple as that,” volunteer Adge Ashcroft says.

“We don’t judge anybody who comes through that door. We just serve good food for anyone who needs it and that’s it. The simplicity of it is what I love about it.”

Nobucks, a play on the name of global coffee chain Starbucks, started in 2007 as a community service by members of the Wesley Uniting Church in Melville St, Hobart.

Initially, it was a kind of outreach aimed at bringing more people into the church. But almost of its own volition the program evolved into something much bigger and more meaningful.

Nobucks volunteer Adge Ashcrof and coordinator Suzanne Vincent. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE.

“One of the young women in the church was working part-time at The Body Shop and was telling us about how they would stand out front with some of the product and ask passers-by if they wanted some of it on their skin,” Nobucks co-ordinator Suzanne Vincent says.

“She suggested we should do something similar for the church, to get out there, be seen and try to ‘get a bit of church on people’, in a sense. At the time we’d just been given a $2000 bequest and we were trying to decide how to best use it, so we did up the old kindergarten/Sunday school room in the hall and opened it up for tea and coffee at lunchtime.

“People were free to just walk in and make themselves a drink, sit down for a while, and the minister at the time would sit in here every lunchtime so he could say hello to everyone who walked in and make himself available if anyone wanted to talk some more.”

There was no intention to start running a service for people who were struggling, but the allure of somewhere warm, dry and sheltered with free hot drinks on offer proved attractive to the city’s homeless, disadvantaged and unemployed.

It did not take long for Nobucks to develop a regular crowd of people who were down on their luck. The word was out and Nobucks was about to undertake a further evolution.

“A couple of people started latching on, including a homeless fellow named Barry, who has since passed away,” Vincent says.

“He would scrounge food from various places, and he would come in here and use our kitchen to cook himself a meal. And if there was someone else here who he liked, he would share it with them.

“One day Barry arrived here with a big bag of potatoes he’d got from somewhere and I said, ‘Let’s make some chips with those’.

So we did that and everyone had some, and then it started to evolve from there. My husband grows pumpkins, so one day I’d bring a big one in and make a big pot of pumpkin soup and so on.”

Nobucks now provides three-course, freshly cooked lunches from Monday to Friday, free for anyone who walks through the door.

For some of our volunteers, it’s their passion. It’s their reason for getting up in the morning.

The food is mostly donated by the Food Bank and Second Bite, and everything else is bought with the modest funds donated by various sources, including the Allport Bequest and the Premier’s Discretionary Fund.

The group has actively resisted the temptation to apply for an ongoing government grant to support its work.

“If we secured a grant, suddenly we would become a service provider and we would end up with a list of requirements and guidelines that come along with that sort of funding and we don’t want that,” Ashcroft says.

“We just want to provide food and it fosters friendships. That’s all we need from it, we don’t want to complicate it.

“Occasionally people might come in and ask if we have computers for internet access or something like that, but we don’t, we never will, that’s not what we’re here for. There are other places you can go for that.

“One lady a while ago asked me why we didn’t have computers, and I said to her, ‘Stop, listen, what do you hear?’. She said, ‘People talking’. I said, ‘Yep, precisely’. That’s the best therapy out there. Someone might be saying they have some issue or another and the person they’re talking to will say, ‘Oh yeah, I went to this or that place for that problem …’ they help each other.” Although the clientele is almost exclusively made up of people enduring some kind of hardship, the original open-door policy applies to all.

“When we say anyone can come in for a free meal, we mean it – literally anyone at all,” Vincent says.

“I said that to one guy and he said he didn’t think we should feed him because he had a job, he could afford his own food. So I said maybe he could give a donation afterwards if he wanted, but he’s still free to come.”

Ashcroft hastens to add that financial hardship was not the only way people could be struggling.

“Someone might come in who can afford their own food, but they might be lonely, they might just need company, and they’re quite free to do so,” he says.

“And maybe you’re on unemployment benefits and maybe you can afford to buy a meal, but when money is very tight, and you have the option of having a meal free, it frees up more of your budget for other things. It’s a simple equation.”

Nobucks makes a point of never serving people second-rate food, either.

“If this place was a dump, people would treat it like a dump, they wouldn’t respect it,” Ashcroft says.

“If you tell them that’s all they’re worth, that’s what they’ll believe. So we make sure it looks nice, it’s clean, there are tablecloths and flowers, because people are worth that.”

For the small army of about 20 volunteers, Nobucks is a way to give something back to the community, and it is essentially a reward in itself.

“For some of our volunteers, it’s their passion,” Vincent says. “It’s their reason for getting up in the morning.

“We never knew it would turn into something like this but I thought, ‘Well, I’m pretty fortunate, maybe it’s my turn to give back’.

And I still think we get more back out of this than we ever put in.

“When you’re treated with dignity, you act with dignity. That’s what Nobucks gives people.”

● Nobucks is based in the Wesley Hall and Forecourt, 56-58 Melville St, Hobart, and serves a free lunch Monday-Friday, from noon-2pm.

Readers wishing to donate to Nobucks can phone Wesley Uniting Church on 6231 4033

For more great lifestyle reads, pick up a copy of TasWeekend magazine in your Saturday Mercury.

Originally published as TasWeekend: Chow aplenty at Nobucks