Rising Cafe ★9.7

There is a category of café where the coffee is the point, and there is a much smaller category where the coffee pays for something. Rising Cafe belongs firmly to the second. It sits inside Anchor Point in Aston, the national headquarters of a charity that works with people coming out of addiction and homelessness, and the people who cook your breakfast, pull your coffee and carry your plate are, in most cases, the same people the charity exists to help. Every penny the café takes goes back into that work.

Highlights

• A café that funds a recovery programme — Rising Cafe is a trading name of a registered charity, and its entire income goes towards housing and rehabilitating people affected by addiction and homelessness.
• Staffed by the people it serves — the team is drawn from the charity’s own residential communities, which means the person behind the counter is often someone rebuilding a life rather than someone filling a shift.
• Inside a purpose-built social enterprise centre — Anchor Point houses the charity’s headquarters along with a salon, an events business and an arts venture, and it was formally opened in 2024 by the Prince of Wales.
• Room for a hundred — indoor and outdoor seating together take up to a hundred guests, which makes this one of the few cafés in the city where a large group is a normal booking rather than a crisis.
• Everything baked in-house — cakes, desserts and baked goods are made on site, and the kitchen also takes bespoke celebration cake orders.
• Free parking, outside the Clean Air Zone — a genuine practical rarity for anywhere within reach of central Birmingham.

What’s in the cup

Honesty first: this is not a third-wave coffee bar and it does not present itself as one. The café serves speciality coffee and takes it seriously enough to put it at the front of what it offers, but it does not publish a roastery partner, does not run a rotating single-origin filter, and does not build its identity around extraction. If your criterion for a café is a named micro-lot on a chalkboard, look elsewhere in this list.

What it does instead is cover the ground properly for the people who actually come here: proper coffee made to order, alongside cream teas and American-style thick milkshakes, which is a drinks list aimed squarely at families, groups and people who came to sit for an hour rather than to analyse a cup. That is a coherent choice, not a compromise, and it fits a room designed to hold a hundred people.

The wider point is worth stating plainly. In a café run by a rehabilitation charity, the bar is also a training environment. People who arrive with no work history at all learn to run a service, keep a station, handle customers and finish a shift. The coffee is real, and it is also a curriculum.

Who’s behind it

Rising Cafe is a working name of Betel of Britain, a Christian charity registered in England and Scotland that has been operating in the UK since 1996. It runs residential communities for men and women affected by drug and alcohol addiction and homelessness — many of them arriving from the street or straight out of prison — and it does so without government funding.

That last detail is the reason the café exists. Because the charity takes no state money, it has to generate its own, and it does that through businesses run by the people in its programme. The cafés are the most visible of those; together with the charity’s other trading arms, they cover the overwhelming majority of its running costs. So the transaction here is unusually direct: you buy lunch, and lunch pays for someone’s bed, food and rehabilitation.

The Birmingham site is the flagship. Anchor Point was built as the charity’s national headquarters and social enterprise centre, bringing the café together with a salon, an events business and a performing arts venture under one roof, and it was officially opened in the spring of 2024 by Prince William, who had visited the charity before.

Which visit it suits

This is a destination café rather than a passing one, and that shapes everything. Nobody stumbles into it on the way to somewhere else — you go because you decided to — and the consequence is that it suits the visits that need time and space rather than speed.

It is one of the best options in the city for a group. Between the indoor room and the outdoor seating it takes up to a hundred people, and the same operation does catering and venue hire, so a table of ten is routine here in a way it simply is not in a small independent in the centre. Families work well for the same reason: space, parking at the door, and a menu that covers children, vegetarians, vegans and gluten-free without a negotiation.

For a meeting it is a genuinely good and slightly unexpected choice — quiet by the standards of a city-centre café, easy to park at, and neutral ground. For laptop work the practical conditions are promising but unstated: there is plenty of room and no rush, but the café does not publish anything about sockets or Wi-Fi, so plan to run on your own battery unless you have checked. And for coming alone, this is a warm room rather than an anonymous one; if you would rather not be spoken to, this is not the quietest corner in Birmingham to hide in.

The room and the atmosphere

The style is industrial — a large, open, modern space rather than a small period room, which is exactly what a building designed as a headquarters and event venue produces. There is indoor seating and outdoor seating, and the combined capacity of around a hundred tells you most of what you need to know about the scale.

The atmosphere is the thing people remember, and it is not a design decision. A café staffed by people who are personally invested in it, in a building whose entire purpose is second chances, feels different from a unit run to a franchise manual. Service tends to be warm to the point of chatty. Some people love that; if you want to be invisible with a book, be aware of it going in.

Because the building also hosts events, salon appointments and arts productions, the café shares its footfall with the rest of the site. That makes it livelier than its out-of-centre address would suggest, and it also means the character of a given visit varies with what else is happening in the building that day.

Beyond the coffee

The food offer is broader than a café’s normally is, because this kitchen also feeds events. Breakfasts and lunches run as you would expect, but the real strength is the baking: cakes, desserts and baked goods are made on site rather than bought in, and the team takes bespoke orders for celebration cakes, which is not something most cafés this size will do.

Dietary coverage is unusually complete — vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options are built in rather than improvised. And the same kitchen runs catering beyond the building, so if you have eaten here and liked it, that is a service you can hire rather than just a menu you can order from.

When to come

It runs as a daytime café — open through the working day and closing in the evening rather than trading late — and the rhythm follows the building rather than a commuter flow. Midday is the busiest stretch, particularly when the site has an event on.

If you are coming with a large group or want the outdoor seating, ring ahead rather than arriving hopeful; the same team handles catering and private hire, so they will tell you straight away what the day looks like. For a quiet visit, the edges of the day are calmer than the middle.

Getting there

The café is in Aston, north-east of the city centre — close enough for a short ride from the core, far enough out that the whole logic of the visit is different from a centre café. It sits just outside Birmingham’s Clean Air Zone, which matters if you are driving something that would otherwise be charged, and there is free parking both on the street and on the site itself.

By public transport it is a bus ride from the city centre, and the nearest suburban rail stations serving this side of town leave you with a walk rather than dropping you at the door. If you have a car, this is one of the rare Birmingham cafés where bringing it is the easy option rather than the difficult one.

Good to know

Know what you are walking into, and it is a much better visit. This is a charity’s café inside a charity’s headquarters, run by people in recovery, funded by what you spend. It is not a speciality coffee pilgrimage and it does not want to be. It is a large, warm, practical room that does breakfast, lunch and very good home baking, with parking outside and space for a group.

The honest limitations: it is out of the centre, so it costs you a journey; the coffee programme is solid rather than experimental and the roastery is not named publicly; service is friendly rather than discreet; and practical details like sockets and Wi-Fi are not published, so ask if they matter. The counterweight is that almost no other café in the city can tell you exactly where your money went.

Questions and answers

What is the charity connection?

Rising Cafe is a trading name of a registered Christian charity that has worked in the UK since 1996 with people affected by drug and alcohol addiction and homelessness. All of the café’s income goes into that work.

Who works in the café?

Largely people from the charity’s own residential communities — men and women in recovery, many of whom arrived with no work history. The café is both a business and a training environment.

Does it receive public funding?

No. The charity takes no government money and covers the great majority of its running costs through businesses like this one, which is why the café’s takings matter so directly.

Can it handle a large group?

Yes — indoor and outdoor seating together take up to a hundred guests, and the same team does catering and private hire. Call ahead for a big party rather than arriving unannounced.

Is the food made on site?

The baking is, and it is the strongest part of the offer: cakes, desserts and baked goods are made in-house, and bespoke celebration cakes can be ordered.

Are there vegan and gluten-free options?

Yes. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free choices are part of the standard menu rather than something you have to negotiate.

Is there parking?

Yes, free, both on the street and on site — and the location is just outside the Clean Air Zone, which makes driving here genuinely straightforward.

Are there other branches?

Yes, the same charity runs sister cafés under the name in Lincoln and Hexham. The Birmingham site is the largest and sits inside the charity’s national headquarters.

Is it a good place to work with a laptop?

Possibly, but it is not advertised as one. There is space and nobody hurries you, yet nothing is published about sockets or Wi-Fi, so bring a charged battery or check first.

Opening hours