Community Corner: The café putting kindness on the menu

Take a look inside the Frome high street hub, tackling loneliness with pay-what-you-can meals and a growing movement to rebuild community connection

Tucked away in a Somerset high street, the smell of homemade soup fills the air. Local residents gather here to grab a coffee, start a conversation with a stranger, or even volunteer to do a shift behind the counter.

This is The Good Heart café in Frome. Founded in 2018 by local resident Alison Murdoch Keyes, the cafe acts as a central hub for The Good Heart project, which is dedicated to celebrating, practising, and exploring kindness in the community.

“The idea grew from a recognition that, despite living in busy towns, many people feel increasingly disconnected. Loneliness, financial pressure, and the pace of modern life can leave people feeling isolated,” says Lyndsey Mayhew, a town councillor, community connector, and café manager. “The intention was to create something that could bring people together, a place where kindness was not just an idea, but something people could experience in everyday life.”

Connecting with friends over a coffee or a bite to eat is a simple activity. But more than that, it offers essential social time as well as a chance to let off some steam, share a laugh, or get support for everyday struggles. It’s been proposed by researchers that social interaction is a basic human need, as important as food and water. But across Britain’s high streets, data from the ONS and the Local Data Company shows 50,000 commercial premises lie vacant, while research commissioned by Crown Paints revealed that government funding for public social spaces has dropped by a fifth in the past two years. Yet there is an obvious hunger for human connection, with 78% of people surveyed saying that these kinds of community centres contribute to a sense of wellbeing.

The Good Heart café is built to address this need, offering a warm, colourful, welcoming space where locals can enjoy free hot drinks as well as soup and cakes on a ‘pay what you can’ basis. As well as this accessible pricing model, those who can afford to pay more also have the option to ‘pay it forward’, allowing those in need to eat for free.

“The pay what you can model allows those who are able to contribute a little more to help cover meals for those who cannot,” says Lyndsey, “creating a shared space where everyone is treated the same.” It’s this commitment to inclusivity that is at the core of what the project aims to achieve, leading by example that kindness can have a huge impact.

Lyndsey tells me that, over the years, locals have told her that the free meals and warm space have saved their lives. “These have included rough sleepers and people with mental health issues, for whom there’s a limited choice of open doors in the centre of the town,” she explains. “Fair Frome and the Medical Practice regularly direct disadvantaged people to The Good Heart for a lunchtime meal, and we have extensive experience of helping them access other services once they’ve had something hot to eat and drink.”

So much of what the café succeeds at is a direct result of the effort of its volunteers. But there is far more to be done than whipping up a batch of soup and clearing tables – the café also acts as a community hall for groups looking for discounted meeting spaces. From baby-loss support groups to charity projects offering free after-school meals for kids, the doors are open to those who need them.

“The café was never intended to be the whole story,” Lyndsey tells me, explaining that having a central, physical space dedicated to kind acts is a powerful and visible reminder of the deeper purpose of the wider project. According to their mission statement, this crew of loving locals are focused on contributing to the happiness and flourishing of Frome residents by encouraging kindness, activities that explore and promote mental health and wellbeing, and working with local partners to support health and resilience.

In recent years, The Good Heart has expanded its mission to create a kindness movement across the town by hosting The Frome Kindness Festival, which now runs annually, and spans a full week, packed with daily events including everything from choir performances and guided walks, to comedy nights and craft sessions. Not only has this become a much-anticipated event for locals, but it also attracts visitors from neighbouring towns who are intrigued by the kindness culture the project has created, often saying they would love to replicate it for their own towns. In fact, Bradford on Avon has been inspired to start its own kindness festival, which is something that Lyndsey hopes will inspire others to do the same.

As for The Good Heart, they have big plans to keep the kindness coming. They are currently running a pilot project, in collaboration with Spark Somerset, designed to help people find volunteer roles in the area, and they are working to support the relaunch of the town’s sharing library, which allows residents to borrow household items at low prices.

In a time when many of us feel stretched and disconnected, spaces like The Good Heart offer something small but radical – a reminder that community is built through small, consistent acts of care. Whether that’s sharing a meal or a moment of conversation, kindness here is simply part of everyday life.