Independent café group, milk&sugar, has been chosen to provide hospitality in Cardiff University’s landmark sbarc | spark building. The café, on the University’s Innovation Campus, will be open to the public, providing coffee and high-quality fresh produce to University researchers, staff, students and local residents. Sbarc |spark will be milk&sugar’s sixth Cardiff outlet. The group operates independent cafés, kitchens and workspaces across the city, plus a recently-opened eco-retail store in Pontcanna and a kiosk in Merthyr Tydfil’s new bus-rail interchange. Owner Tim Corrigan said: “The milk&sugar collection are really excited to be part of this incredible project at Cardiff University’s iconic sbarc |spark building. Great cafe/breakout spaces play a huge part in creating a heartbeat within a building. When combined with the incredible creative talent of the building’s users, we believe our hospitality will help even more great ideas come to fruition.” Scheduled to open this coming winter, sbarc | spark will be the University’s ‘front door’ to business and wider society: a multi-functional building combining offices, labs, workshops and exhibition facilities that spark creative thinking to solve pressing societal problems and spark new ventures. The centre brings together 13 social science research groups collectively known as SPARK – the world’s first Social Science Research Park – alongside Cardiff Innovations@sbarc – a hub for innovation, start-ups and spinouts. Professor Damian Walford Davies, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, said:
“milk&sugar’s offer was in tune with the SPARK ethos: they were clear – and excited – about how their high-quality products and service would contribute to the energy, sociability, connectivity and creativity of SPARK.” Professor Damian Walford Davies Pro Vice-Chancellor, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Phil Rees-Jones, Director of Campus Services, said: “ We are pleased to welcome milk&sugar onto our campus to complement our excellent in-house cafes, restaurants and hospitality provision here at Cardiff University.”
In total, some 400 social science researchers will be based in sbarc | spark, working with up to 400 collaborators from public, private and third sector ventures. Cardiff Innovation Campus is part of the University’s biggest campus upgrade for a generation, a £600m investment in new facilities including the Centre for Student Life, the Abacws building for mathematics and computer science, and the Translational Research Hub for the sciences of catalysis and compound semiconductors.
