Kids in Museums, the charity behind the Family Friendly Museum Award, has launched a new accreditation for museum cafes.
The Family Café Standard has been designed as a benchmark to recognise museum cafés that are useful for visiting families. Its specifications are based on feedback the charity has received from families, including from family judges for its annual Family Friendly Museum Award, consultation for its Kids in Museums Manifesto and a survey of family museum visitors in summer 2021.
Its family survey reports that 78% of families only ‘sometimes’ or ‘rarely’ found food in museum cafés affordable and only 22% felt they offered a good variety of children’s food.
Developed in partnership with British catering company Benugo, the Family Café Standard rates museum cafés on the quality of their online information and promotion, space and facilities, choice of food, affordability, sustainability and staff training.
Benugo will be the only catering company with the new accreditation until February 2024, and it will open to independent museum cafés and café chains in the UK from November 2023.
The cafés to have gained accreditation include those at the British Museum in London, Edinburgh Castle and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Alison Bowyer, Executive Director of Kids in Museums, said: “The launch of our new benchmark has been many months in the making and we hope this is a significant first step in enhancing café provision at museums across the UK.
