Our Story
Revival Food & Mood is run by a dedicated and passionate team.
Community and mental wellness is at the heart of everything we do. We strive to support our community with free, accessible mental health support and information in calm, inclusive and inviting surroundings with great food & music.
We look forward to welcoming you!
Our Vision:
“We strive to support our community with free, accessible mental health support and information in calm, inclusive and inviting surroundings with great food & music. Good food and services have the power to enhance our communities and transform our everyday lives”
The vision for Revival evolved over many years and was devised in response to often ‘old-fashioned’ ideas and expectations of mental health spaces and approaches. Revival needed to be different.
Revival, Food & Mood was set up as a self-funded social enterprise by Mind in Bexley and East Kent in 2016, with the first Whitstable Cafe hub opening in the summer of 2017 in Oxford Street, run as a community café and mental health hub for families, young people and adults.
An innovative model combining food, community and wellbeing, premised on access for all in a purposefully visible, accessible, central High Street location supporting our community’s wellness journey with an emphasis on prevention and proactive self-care. Revival provides support and information as well as facilitated peer support and mentoring, workshops, talks & discussion groups, wellness activities, referral pathways, signposting and space for the community to meet, upskill, train, volunteer and work.
After a move to a local Art Centre in 2019, Revival sadly found itself without a home during Covid lockdown 2021. After a widely backed community campaign and with the support of Mind in Bexley and East Kent, Revival was able to relocate, some 18 months later, to the old Woolley’s Menswear shop, Whitstable. It took a further year to plan, rebuild and renovate this local heritage building that had sadly been left in a state of disrepair. This was only possible thanks to the hard work of the Revival Executive Director who facilitated a successful application for matched funding from the UK Government’s Levelling Up Community Ownership Fund. This funding recognised Revival as a sustainable asset of community value and has ensured that 58 High Street, Whitstable is Revival’s permanent home and its unique happy place.
Revival Food & Mood is a feast for the senses, carefully and thoughtfully designed from the entrance through to the secluded patio garden. You enter the double fronted building with the indoor garden space and water feature on your left with original 1960’s tulip table and chairs, where you then walk past the original Formica tables and the acoustic booths, keep going through to the 1970’s inspired back café with comfy sofa’s, vinyl decks and disco ball. You will find very many retro inspired touches from the salvaged furniture to the explosively nostalgic wallpaper and colour palette.
We have also partnered with local qualified herbalist Bloominwild remedies to bring you a bespoke Therapy Tea-bar and we have a small shop area for Revival merchandise and local creatives. We are family-friendly (including four-legged family members) and offer flexible seating for individuals to large groups.
The menu is no exception when it comes to a feast, with an abundance of deliciously nutritious street food inspired dishes to tantalise your tastebuds, and feed your soul. Always a vegetarian cafe, Revival continues to serve delicious food and drinks with lots of plant-based and gluten-free, friendly options – there really is something for everyone.
We believe good food and services have the power to enhance our communities and transform our everyday lives.
Music is Medicine
for the Mind
David Palmer (CEO Mind in Bexley and East Kent)
Revival is an integral part of me, who I am, what I love and what I do. I helped set this fantastic initiative up based on my own deep love of music as a therapy for my own mental health struggles and my recovery journey which have been well documented.
Music is a universal language within which we can all find our voice, we can connect, resonate and feel sad or uplifted. Music opens up our imagination to different possibilities, allowing us to escape to other continents, cultures and moments in time. Throughout my mental health journey music has been a loyal friend allowing me to lose myself and find myself at the same time. Music was, and is, ‘medicine for my mind’ and it is on this basis that the concept of Revival began.
As an ‘expert by experience’ all I longed for and wanted was a vibrant welcoming inclusive space surrounded by kindness and music that would help with my recovery. Sadly, no such place existed. So as the CEO of Mind in Bexley and East Kent I went about setting one up.
My vision was for more than a ‘mental health’ café, all spaces should be mental health spaces and a café was a perfect partner, providing space for social interaction, informal support, good food and a good footfall audience for raising mental health awareness and challenging stigma.
I wanted to normalise mental health and create a welcoming thriving energetic bright space where it was okay to talk about mental health at the same time as spinning a record on the decks. The decks at Revival have been a real focal and talking point and is often the start of mental health conversations, we have also been able to hold DJ nights and bring people together for dance events.
Music is most definitely a key part of Revival and we look forward to sharing our vision with you when you next visit, we also welcome your musical favourites and will happily play your own records for you when you do.
