
No Limits Community Café is a pillar of Newton Abbot’s community. Sarah Thorp and Amanda Pugh opened its doors in 2020 to provide work experience and supported employment opportunities to those with additional needs. They then started the outreach programme in 2023, helping those with disabilities to gain long term paid employment, and helping employers across Devon to become more disability aware and confident. No Limits has also supported local organisations and businesses with catering such as Teignbridge District Council and Phoenix Sound.
Read more from Sarah’s account to find out why they opened No Limits, what the impact of the community café has been on Devon, and what plans they have for the future.

What led you to open No Limits?
My background is in psychology and education, but the key is my lived experience of being a parent of a young person with complex needs. Looking at college and employment opportunities, I was concerned that there were narrow options for my son. The transition to adulthood is tricky anyway, but when that coincides with leaving education and childhood services, and going to adult services and starting work, it’s a huge change with significant challenges.
Therefore, I wanted an organisation that could give him opportunities and training in tasks such as customer service, till, barista skills, and support him into paid employment. As a parent of a young person with needs, it can be quite lonely at times. It’s important if you can share that knowledge and experience and be there for others on that journey.
What has been the local impact of No Limits?
Over the years, more than 150 people have joined us doing different types of work experience, internships or apprenticeships. We’ve moved about 20 people into employment with organisations like IKEA, South Devon Railway, Dainton Golf Club, some of them in hospitality, but we try not to restrict it to one area of work. We enable people to think about where it is they want to be, their aspirations, and work back from there.
Some of our regular customers, who may feel marginalised in some way, come in knowing that our staff are disability awareness trained, have mental health first aid training, and they engage and listen to customers as well as doing their job coach work. It feels more like a hub than just a café.
Volunteers who’ve also used us for work experience come for our monthly Social Saturdays and take part in board games, crafts events, and such. Lots of adults we’ve worked with have expressed they don’t have much involvement in the community, so we felt that was important for them to stay in contact with the people here and broaden their opportunties.
What have some of the volunteers gone on to do since working at the community café and going through the supported employment scheme?
The supported employment scheme is a five-stage model where you work through different processes with customers and employers. It’s really successful not just in terms of securing employment, but retaining employment too, since carrying on working with them if things get tough is important too.
Somebody I’d worked with who was looking for employment through Exeter Youth Hub applied for a job with IKEA. They’re an amazing company as they’re very inclusive and supportive, they’ve used Access to Work as support for people working with them, and have just got it right in terms of making adaptations for staff and their needs.
The aim for many of our participants is that we are a stepping stone to try and move people on to paid employment. Often, volunteers are here for about 8 weeks’ work experience, then I work with them towards the end of that period to explore what they want to do from there.
For others who stay for longer or might find mainstream employment a far reach right now, we carry on working with them to build different skills, do barista certificates or food hygiene certifications, and provide an opportunity for them to feel valued and part of a working environment with colleagues.
What have been the difficulties of coordinating No Limits?
When you’re balancing running a café with more staff than most cafes do, and a supported employment scheme at the same time, the day to day running of it is a real challenge.
Our overheads are higher since we also wanted to be on the high street rather than in a community centre. Since the moment we opened in 2020 and had lockdown, then COVID recovery, then the energy crisis, then the economic crisis, we haven’t had a stable economic period. However, we were amazed at the level of support from our crowdfunder to raise £37,000 in 8 weeks, which enabled us to stay open during a real crunch point.
What are your future aspirations for No Limits?
We apply for funds from various places like the National Lottery Community Fund and many others, but we want to have more control fundraising ourselves. As a small Community Interest Company, we have limited access to pots of funding, so we’re converting to a charitable organisation that will allow us to apply for more support, access gift aid and have a board of trustees that will allow us more resources to invest in and generate our own fundraising strategy.
Have you got any advice for anyone wanting to start a community café or charity?
Visit as many existing ones as you can. Think about what the successful models out there look like. Have people sit down and be honest with you about what the real challenges are. Neither I nor my co-director had a business background, so we would’ve benefitted from seeing a few more and varying models with different geographic and economic demands.
Work towards your charitable objectives and stick as closely to that as you can. Have good business planning, a strong theory of change, and a strong ethos of what you’re standing for rather than trying to do too many things at once.