Repair Café is an organization that sets up places where people can fix everyday items, such as electronics, mechanical devices, computers, bicycles, and clothing. These events usually take place in community areas like churches, libraries, and college campuses, where tools are available and volunteers help people repair their broken items. Repair Café is part of a community-based movement that works to reduce waste, stop overusing products, and address the problem of items being made to break down quickly. This initiative encourages people to work together and fix things themselves, which helps build stronger connections within communities.

History

In 2009, Martine Postma, a Dutch journalist who wanted to help the environment at the local level, started the first Repair Café in Amsterdam. On October 18, 2009, the first Repair Café took place at Fijnhout Theater in Amsterdam-West. On March 2, 2010, the Repair Café Foundation was created. This foundation was formed to help local groups worldwide start their own Repair Cafés. Since then, the number of Repair Cafés has increased quickly. In March 2016, Postma reported more than 1,000 Repair Cafés worldwide, including 327 in the Netherlands, 309 in Germany, 22 in the UK, 21 in the US, 15 in Canada, 4 in Australia, and 1 in India. In 2019, The Guardian estimated there were about 1,300 Repair Cafés worldwide. The Repair Café Foundation estimated that the number had passed 2,000 by 2021. As of October 2025, more than 3,818 Repair Cafés are available to visit.

In 2017, the first International Repair Day was announced. This event is planned to happen every year on the third Saturday of October.

Knowledge sharing

In 2017, the Repair Café Foundation created an online tool called RepairMonitor. This tool helps volunteers collect and share information about repairs in a database. The data follows the Open Repair Data standard, which records important details such as the type of product, brand, age of the product, the problem that occurred, the repair that was tried, whether the repair was successful, and if not, the reason for the failure. As of October 2025, more than 305,649 repair records are available in the open repair database.

3D printing of broken parts

Some Repair Cafés now use 3D printers to make copies of broken parts. Broken pieces from household appliances can sometimes be fixed by putting them together or gluing them. After fixing, the items are scanned using a 3D scanner. Examples of 3D scanners include David Starter-Kit, 3D Systems Sense, MakerBot Digitizer, Fuel 3D, Microsoft Kinect, and Asus Xtion. Once the object is scanned, a 3D model is created. This model can be changed into a .stl or .obj format and adjusted using software like makeprintable, netfabb, MeshLab, Meshmixer, Cura, or Slic3r. A 3D printer then creates a physical copy of the part. This process requires time to complete.