Food is how we give back.
Flame has always been about more than dinner service. Three years in, we still spend more on community programmes than we do on marketing. Here's what we do, and how to get involved.
What three years of restaurant community work looks like.
Pensioner meals served
Hot, free, hand-delivered every fortnight.
Food packs delivered weekly
To vulnerable families across Oxford.
Community groups supported
Schools, mosques, youth clubs, food banks.
Years of community work
And counting — slowly, properly.
Programme 01
Pensioner meals.
We hand-deliver hot meals to elderly residents across Oxford every fortnight — free, on us, no fuss. Some of them are former regulars who can't easily get to the restaurant anymore. Some of them we met through a community group. All of them get the same proper meal we'd serve a paying customer.
"Better than the meals I used to make myself, dear. And he stops for a brew."
Programme 02
Food packs for vulnerable families.
Forty-plus weekly packs go to families across Oxford who've been referred to us through schools, social workers, or word of mouth. Each pack is built to cover a few evenings — not just one. We don't photograph them. We don't ask for names on the door. The point isn't a story for the website; the point is dinner.
"They turned up with three nights' worth. That was the week we got the heating fixed."
Programme 03
Community group support.
Donated meals for local schools' end-of-term events. Iftar plates for nearby mosques during Ramadan. Friday box meals for the youth club. Bulk orders at cost for the food bank when their supply gap widens. We don't have a formal grants programme. We have a phone, and we say yes when we can.
- Local Primary Schools
- Community Mosques
- YMCA
- City Foodbank
- Neighbourhood Hubs
"A neighbourhood restaurant that quietly does more for its city than most names twice its size."
— The Sentinel · January 2026