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How to find, or start, a repair café near you

Repair cafés pair volunteers who can fix things with people who have broken things. Here is how they work and how to start one.

2 October 2026 · 7 min read

A person mending fabric at a sewing machine

Chetanya Goel · Founder & Editor

Chetanya started Annam Naturals after two years of keeping a household waste diary. Chetanya writes about the boring, repeatable habits that hold up in a real week.

The first repair café opened in Amsterdam in 2009. The idea spread to thousands of locations worldwide: a regular, free event where people bring broken things and volunteers help fix them. They are usually social, with tea and conversation, and the goal is to teach as much as to repair.

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What gets fixed

  • Small electrical appliances: lamps, toasters, fans, mixers
  • Clothes and textiles
  • Bicycles
  • Furniture and wooden items
  • Toys, jewellery and bags

Repair rates vary, but many cafés report fixing a majority of the items brought in. Even when something cannot be fixed, the owner usually learns why.

Finding one

Search online for 'repair café' with your city's name. The international Repair Café Foundation keeps a map of registered cafés. Also look at community groups, colleges with engineering or design departments, and maker spaces, which sometimes run similar events under different names.

Starting one

You do not need a big organisation. You need a space, a few skilled volunteers and a date.

The space

A community hall, a society clubhouse, a library or a café that is quiet on Sunday mornings all work. You need tables, power sockets and good light.

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The volunteers

Ask around for people who already fix things: retired electricians, tailors, cycle mechanics, carpenters, students who like taking things apart. Three or four people with different skills are enough for a first event.

The rules

Keep them simple. Repairs are free, owners stay and help, and volunteers can decline anything unsafe. Many cafés ask owners to sign a short form accepting that repairs are done at their own risk.

The tools

Volunteers often bring their own. A shared basic kit of screwdrivers, a multimeter, a sewing machine and some glue covers most early needs.

Making it last

Hold events on a regular schedule, such as the first Sunday of every month, so people can plan around it. Keep a simple log of what came in and what was fixed; the numbers help attract volunteers and venues. Above all, keep it friendly. A repair café works because it turns fixing things into something people enjoy doing together.

For more of this kind of testing, the zero-waste home hub collects everything we've tried in that area.

Frequently asked

Do I need to buy anything to get started?

No. Every method here begins with what is already in your cupboards. We only recommend a purchase when something has genuinely worn out, and we say what it should cost.

How do you test the things you write about?

Minimum four weeks of ordinary household use, with notes. For anything involving energy or money we use a plug-in meter and record the readings before and after.

Are your recommendations paid for?

Never. Brands cannot buy placement. Some outbound links are affiliate links, which we mark, and they do not change what makes the list.

What if a method doesn't work in my home?

Write to us. A surprising amount of our best material comes from readers explaining why something failed in a flat, a shared house or a very cold winter.

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