Bridging Generations with Baked Goods!
Imagine a place you can go with baked goods as sweet and delicious as your grandmother’s….
Vollpension is a charming old fashioned café based in Vienna making waves for not only its "Kaffe und Kuchen," or coffee and cake, but is also a highly successful experiment in ‘social entrepreneurship’. With framed portraits, art, lace doilies, tiny vases and other cute animal figurines scattered throughout, Vollpension is staffed largely by Grandmothers (or Omas and the occasional Opa!) who bake many of the delectable cakes, using their own recipes becoming a true talking point!
"This is more than just a coffee shop. I come from the countryside and was raised by my grandparents. Older people are very precious to me. We are working on building a community, a human way of coming together." - Hannah Lux, 31, Managing partner of the Café.
Vollpension provides a commercially sustainable way to offer much-needed extra income. Equally important, it provides friendly generation-bridging interaction for older people who may otherwise feel lonely or isolated. The clientele often includes young mothers with children and other multigenerational groups.
Along with the delicious, home made cakes, Vollpension offers many monthly activities including knitting, yoga, theatre to name a few, allowing the older staff to share their knowledge and skill with each other and the younger customers.
This is a generation-bridging social initiative we can get behind!