Family Café Standard
Find out about our Family Café Standard: what it is, why it’s important to families and how to get accredited.
The Kids in Museums Family Café Standard logo on display at Canteen at the London Transport Museum, one of 20 accredited sites in the UK. Photography by Jayne Lloyd. What is the Family Café Standard?
Our Family Café Standard is a new benchmark that recognises cafés at museums and cultural institutions 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 your wider museum.
We developed the standard in Spring 2023 in partnership with catering company Benugo, which runs museum cafés across the UK. The specifications are based on feedback from family judges for our Family Friendly Museum Award, consultation for our 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.
Our standard rates museum cafés on the quality of their online information and promotion, space and facilities, choice of food, affordability, sustainability and staff training.
Read the Family Café Standard Checklist.
How do I gain accreditation for my museum?
Applications for accreditation with the Family Café Standard will open on Tuesday 14 May 2024.
Applicants are sent an assessment form based on our Family Café Standard Checklist and full instructions on how to complete it. Successful applicants will be announced in Summer 2024.
Costs
The costs for accreditation are listed below and all prices are inclusive of VAT. You will pay half when you register and half when you receive your assessment. We will not assess your application until we receive your first payment.
- 1-2 cafés: £350 per café or £200 for small museums with under 50,000 visits a year
- 3-5 cafés: £315 per café (10% discount)
- 6+ cafés: £298 per café (15% discount)
Accreditation with the Family Café Standard is valid for two years.
Which sites are accredited?
See which museums have gained the Family Café Standard in the map below.
Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology
Beaumont Street, Oxford
OX1 2PH
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Old Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG
British Museum
Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London
WC1B 3DG
Burrell Collection
The Burrell Collection, Pollok Country Park, 2060 Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow G43 1AT
Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle The Esplanade Edinburgh EH1 2NG
Greenwich Park
Greenwich Park Office Blackheath Gate Charlton Way Greenwich London SE10 8QY
Hyde Park
Hyde Park Office Rangers Lodge Hyde Park London W2 2UH
London Transport Museum
London Transport Museum, 39 Wellington Street, London
WC2E 7BB
London Zoo
London Zoo Outer Circle, London NW1 4RY
Mary Rose Museum
The Mary Rose Museum Dock 3, Main Road HM Naval Base Portsmouth
National Maritime Museum
National Maritime Museum,
Park Row,
London
SE10 9NF
National Museum of Scotland
National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh
EH1 1JF
National Museums Scotland
Chambers Street
Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh EH1 1JF
Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road, Kensington, London
SW7 5BD
Petersfield Museum
Petersfield Museum, St Peters Road
St Peters Road
Petersfield, GU32 3HX
Science and Industry Museum
Liverpool Road, Manchester
M3 4FP
Senedd Cymru | Welsh Parliament
Welsh Parliament, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff CF99 1SN
St James’s Park
St James's Park, The Old Police House, Hyde Park, London, W2 2UH
Stirling Castle
Stirling Castle Castle Esplanade Stirling FK8 1EJ
The Barbican, London
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London
EC2Y 8DS
The Historic Dockyard Chatham
Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, 1st Floor North, Fitted Rigging House, Anchor Wharf, The Historic Dockyard, Chatham
ME4 4TZ
The Postal Museum
15-20 Phoenix Place, London
WC1X 0DA
The Regent’s Park
Regent's Park, London, NW1 4NR
The Science Museum
64 Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London
SW7 2DD
The Story Museum
Rochester House, 42 Pembroke Street, Oxford
OX1 1BP
Urquhart Castle
Urquhart Castle By Drumnadrochit Near Inverness IV63 6XJ
Windsor Great Park
Windsor Great Park, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 2HT
Woodhorn Museum
Woodhorn Museum QEII Country Park Ashington, Northumberland NE63 9YF
Young V&A
Cambridge Heath Road, London
E2 9PA
Share your experience at a café accredited with our Family Café Standard
If you have visited one of the museum cafés accredited with our Family Café Standard, please feel free to give us your feedback, positive or negative, in the short online form below.
It is important to us that museums maintain the standards that gained them accreditation. We will contact venues where the family experience falls short of what we would expect.
Museum Café Feedback Form
