Today, Kids in Museums, a charity dedicated to making museums open and welcoming to all children, young people and families, and Benugo officially launch a new Family Café Standard which will run exclusively at over 20 Benugo sites over the summer holidays and into autumn 2023.

Sophie McCready, Director of Partnerships & Marketing, Benugo, comments: “We are proud to announce our partnership with Kids in Museums as we continue to ensure Benugo sites are as inclusive and accessible as possible. The Family Café Standard will take into consideration the cost to purchase food and drink in museum cafés, and the availability of healthy options, amongst other criteria.”

“We have worked in close collaboration over the past year to create an accreditation scheme which we hope will become a recognised benchmark throughout the UK.”

Alison Bowyer, Executive Director of Kids in Museums, said: “Congratulations to the first group of visitor attractions to achieve our Family Café Standard. The small but meaningful changes the venues have made will make an important difference to families’ experience of visiting a museum. 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. I would like to thank our partners at Benugo for their commitment to our mission to make museums welcoming spaces for all children and families.”

The cafés to have gained accreditation include those at the British Museum in London, Edinburgh Castle and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

What is the Family Café Standard?

The Kids in Museums Family Café Standard is a new benchmark that recognises museum cafés that are great for families. Visiting a museum café is a major part of a family’s visit and it is important that the visitor experience maintains the quality of the wider museum.

The specifications are based on feedback Kids in Museums 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.

The cost of food and drink at museums, as well as a lack of healthy family friendly options, was found to be a significant barrier to family museum visits, according to research from Morris Hargreaves Macintyre. In our family survey, 78% said they 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 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.

The Family Café Standard will open to independent museum cafés and café chains in the UK from November 2023. Please visit the Kids in Museums website for further information: bit.ly/FamilyCafeStandard

Benugo will be the only catering company with the new accreditation until February 2024.

Notes to Editors

For further information, images or interviews, please contact Jocelyn Murdoch, Content and Communications Manager at Kids in Museums: [email protected]

About Kids in Museums

We are an award-winning charity dedicated to making museums open and welcoming to all children, young people and families. We support and champion family friendly organisations through wide-ranging initiatives, including the Family Friendly Museum Award and Takeover Day. We invite heritage organisations to sign up to our Manifesto, which sets out simple guidelines for making museums easy to reach for all ages. www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk

Find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

About Benugo

Benugo was founded in 1998 in Clerkenwell, London, by brothers Ben and Hugo. They had a vision of not just creating superb, natural food but of giving London something that was a real experience. This vision is still true today.

The Benugo brand stretches from award-winning high street stores to cafes and restaurants within some of the world’s best-loved public spaces and high-volume visitor attractions such as Natural History Museum, V&A, Ashmolean, The British Museum, Science Museum, ABBA Voyage, BFI Southbank, Edinburgh and Stirling Castles and John Lewis stores throughout the UK. A strong retail discipline coupled with an independent and entrepreneurial spirit underpins the whole brand.

As the hospitality industry works towards a more sustainable future, Benugo strives to make better choices and is constantly updating policies in line with this.

Benugo has recently rolled out science-based carbon labelling for cakes and chilled food in its cafés and restaurants across the UK to help visitors make informed food choices based on environmental impact. The data and carbon labelling system has been developed and administered by Foodprint from Nutritics, a pioneering, fully automated and award-winning environmental impact scoring system for the hospitality and food service sector. Its labels highlight scoring levels of carbon impact from A-E, with A being the most climate-friendly choice.

Benugo serves carbon neutral coffee in collaboration with ClimatePartner across all outlets. The new hot drinks menu allows customers to see the carbon footprint of the most impactful hot drinks so they can make an informed choice, with all cradle to grave emissions offset into certified projects as part of a wider carbon reduction program. Benugo’s espresso blend is brewed with beans that are 100% Rainforest Alliance certified.

The full list of Benugo cafés accredited with the Kids in Museums Family Café Standard:

  • Ashmolean Café at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
  • Barbican Kitchen at the Barbican Centre, London
  • The Bodleian Café at the Bodleian Library, Oxford
  • The Pizzeria and Great Court Restaurant at the British Museum, London
  • The Burrell Restaurant at the Burrell Collection, Glasgow
  • Redcoat Café at Edinburgh Castle
  • The Pavilion Café at Greenwich Park, London
  • Canteen at London Transport Museum
  • Terrace Restaurant at London Zoo
  • The Café at the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester
  • Museum Kitchen and Balcony Café at National Museum Scotland, Edinburgh
  • T. rex Restaurant at the Natural History Museum, London
  • Regent’s Bar & Kitchen at Regent’s Park, London
  • Parkside Café & Terrace at Royal Museums Greenwich, London
  • Energy Café at the Science Museum, London
  • Serpentine Bar & Kitchen at Hyde Park, London
  • Unicorn Café at Stirling Castle
  • St James’s Café at St James Park, London
  • The Savill Garden Kitchen at Windsor Great Park
  • Lochview Café at Urquhart Castle, Inverness
  • The Town Square Café at Young V&A