Support the Luncheon Club

Announcement from the Luncheon Club Team

The Luncheon Club first began around 1985, predating the former Hackney Chinese Community Services at the Ellingfort Road location.

The first lunch service was organised primarily by housewives whose husbands worked long hours late into the night, tucked away in the kitchens of Chinese takeaway shops. Wanting to support the Chinese community in Hackney, these aunties came together to cook. Soon after, they approached the council and were allocated a small space just large enough for cooking. The aunties prepared the food there and then served it at Hackney Town Hall. This was the predecessor of what we now know as the Luncheon Club.

In those early days, the lunch service was fully self-funded. It was an act of charity that brought the taste of home and a sense of comfort to the Chinese diaspora in Hackney, many of whom were older people.

Not long after, the aunties returned to the council and, this time, secured the iconic building at 28–32 Ellingfort Road—what later became Hackney Chinese Community Services, or 克尼華人中心 (Hackney Chinese Centre).

This time the space is much larger. And most importantly, it was dedicated specifically to the Chinese diaspora, a space of our own. The dining hall could accommodate ten tables and around eighty people. With the new space came funding. The centre officially opened in 1987, with the Luncheon Club at its heart as its core flagship service, alongside advice and advocacy services.

The journey was not always smooth, of course, and the team behind the Luncheon Club has made countless sacrifices over the years. The staff team, Yan, Jennie, Jenny, and the OG aunties, Sindy, Moon, Feng, Betty, Kan, Mui, Lan, and so many others, alongside generations of volunteers, have always been the engine driving the Luncheon Club forward. Now, one year on from the relocation of the former Hackney Chinese Community Services to the Old Bath House at 12–14 Englefield Road and its rebranding as the East and Southeast Asian Community Centre, the Luncheon Club remains its core flagship service.

Many of the Luncheon Club’s activities today have been staples since the very beginning: members’ birthday celebrations, and festive lunches for Lunar New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, and Christmas.

Since its first service in 1985, the Luncheon Club has brought friends together, witnessed new relationships form, watched hair turn white—and new hair grow. Members have come and gone. Many have grown old alongside the Centre, still here, but now as service users rather than service providers. Some have since left this world where the Centre still stands.

The Luncheon Club has now expanded to include the wider ESEA community, our new neighbours, and all who have come to share in our community. In just over a year, we have witnessed the Luncheon Club transform into a hub for intergenerational connection, continuing its magic four decades after the lunch service first began.

It was a hard blow when we learned that our funding application had been rejected. For the first time in almost a decade, a cloud of uncertainty fell over every face in the room. Yet, when we looked back on our history—on how we began with nothing but our own strength, care, and love—the Luncheon Club team unanimously agreed that we would continue providing the service, even if it must come from our own pockets.

The service will continue. We will find ways to keep supporting the Luncheon Club and its service users, and we will keep you updated. These are more difficult times than ever, and we need your support more than ever too. Prices will change, but they will remain low enough for our most vulnerable community members to continue enjoying our food.

This is the best time to propose your ideas, support, or collaborations to help lift the Luncheon Club forward. Many of you already have, and we hope even more of you will join us.

We will be hosting fundraising activities, and our wonderful design volunteers: Raafaye, Kishan, and Peggy, are already working on a Luncheon Club T-shirt. Pre-orders will be available at the Centre’s Christmas Fair and online shortly after.

We may have lost our funding, but our resilient community spirit remains.

We draw inspiration from those who came before us, and we hope that one day, through continued collective effort, a new generation of aunties and uncles will once again open new doors for the Luncheon Club to grow.

We will get through this together.

13 December 2025