The Great Repair Showdown: Cafés vs Businesses

Now, let’s be clear from the very start: this is not a hit piece on repair cafés. They are wonderful, generous, welcoming, community-minded and joyful places where people gather to fix broken things, share stories and learn that our homeware and clothing can be cared for and repaired, not thrown away. They absolutely deserve credit for the resurgence of repair in recent years and should be supported to thrive up and down the country.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth that we, at We Are Repairs, find increasingly frustrating:

When society talks about repair, be that in policy & government, in the media or in general sustainability circles, repair cafés have become the only story. And that narrow focus is a problem because by doing so, we are actively devaluing repair as a professional skill.

If we genuinely care about repair and want to make it a mainstream option that can succeed against mass consumerism and the throwaway culture, then we need to widen the conversation…fast.

The Teams of Repair

Repair Cafés: Repair as Community

Repair cafés are typically monthly or quarterly volunteer-run sessions that are free to access for the general public and built around mutual aid. They allow repairs for people who have the time to wait to attend a session, they demystify fixing things and create social value far beyond the object being repaired. They are brilliant for repairing items that you can carry down to your local communal space. They’re a vital resource.

If you’ve never been to your local repair café, please look it up and head down there. You can find your local café via the Community Repair Network. You’ll find brilliant people sharing their passion and skills with a new generation.

Repair Businesses: Repair as Skilled Work

Repair businesses do something very different. They provide specialist expertise and skill that has often taken years, if not decades, to master and are easily contactable during normal business hours. They operate under real-world constraints like rent, insurance, taxes, supply chains and time pressure. They are the places you go when a repair is complex, risky or sentimentally too important to risk in volunteer hands, and when you don’t have time to wait until the local repair café date coincides with a date that you are free. They provide local jobs and economic resilience to your community.

Repair businesses are not a “nice extra” to supplement what can’t be repaired at a repair café; they are the very infrastructure of repair. They are the only aspect of repair that has the capacity to provide a service similar to what we have become used to.

So Why Does It Matter that Repair Café’s Get All The Talk?

Because when repair is discussed publicly, it’s almost always framed as a volunteer hobby.

When policymakers talk about repair, when journalists write sustainability stories, when tv programmes want a repair story, it’s always repair cafés that are spoken about. Meanwhile, repair businesses are treated like an afterthought and are often made to feel like they should somehow compete with free labour and that by charging for their services, they’re as bad as the mass manufacturers profiting off society. We would never expect electricians, mechanics or plumbers to work for free and survive on goodwill alone. Yet professional repairers are repeatedly asked to rely on passion, volunteerism or “exposure”.

Even on programmes like the BBC’s Repair Shop, which showcases the incredible talent of professional repairers, the cost of the repair is never mentioned & is therefore assumed by the viewers to be free. The reality is that most of the repairs shown would run into the hundreds and even thousands of pounds if paid for as a normal job.

This framing sends the dangerous message that repair is not something worth paying for. And that message is consistently reinforced everywhere, that these specialist skills should be given away for free.

When we celebrate repair only in its unpaid form, we imply that this labour has little economic value. Yet we live in a society where economic value is the highest measure of business success, so by devaluing repair, we are doing a catastrophic disservice to the skills and livelihoods of these craftsmen and women. It is eroding the very foundation of a repair economy and it needs to stop…because while we’re busy romanticising repair, professional repairers are disappearing and skills are being lost for good.

Respecting repair means respecting the people who do it, including their need to pay the bills.

If We Actually Care About Repair, We Need to Do Better

If we want a world where things are repaired not replaced, then we as a society need to stop treating repair as a volunteer side quest. Repair can truly be the answer to mass consumerism, but only when it is accepted and recognised in all of its forms.

Repair cafés and repair businesses are framed as competitors but the reality is that the two serve different purposes. They, along with the third aspect of repair – the Fix It Yourself & DIY version, all need to be valued and respected equally.

Real repair policy that helps us to provide systemic change in society must include:

· Affordable commercial spaces for repair businesses

· Access to spare parts, manuals and diagnostics

· Training pathways and apprenticeships

· Fair consumer pricing that reflects real costs

· Support for professional repair networks

A Call for The Honest Conversation

This isn’t about diminishing repair cafés or choosing sides. It is about seeing the whole story of repair and calling out the real dirty little secret…

Mass manufacturing companies LOVE it that we are currently focusing solely on free repair culture in the UK. When policymakers, brands or campaigns point to repair cafés as evidence that “repair is thriving”, it gives them a convenient excuse not to do the hard work. They can tick the box that they have provided an environmentally friendly service and go back to the same old ways. The onus is yet again pushed on the consumer and not on the ones causing the problems. Repair cafes are no threat to their profiteering economy & the customers they abuse.

Repair will never be a mainstream option for society when repair cafes are the only showcased option. We must loudly and unapologetically recognise repair businesses as essential infrastructure to repair culture because if repair only survives as a hobby, it won’t survive at all.

We need to provide repair access to all members of society, those who have time to go to a repair café, those who want to have a go themselves and also those who haven’t got the time or the inclination to repair it or sort it out themselves and would rather pay someone else to do it.

We need repair businesses back on every high street in every town & city, providing green, skilled jobs for local people and stopping the tidal wave of waste that the throwaway culture has engulfed us with.

At We Are Repairs, we make no apology for proudly shouting from the rooftops about the benefits of repair businesses. We will showcase their value to society, their skill, their passion and their economic value because if we truly believe in the repair, not replace, future, then we need to start acting like skilled repair is worth paying for.