SOCIAL BITE IS A MOVEMENT TO END HOMELESSNESS.
We are a charity and social business providing homes, jobs, food, and support to empower people to transform their own lives.
Our vision is a society where no one should have to be homeless. We challenge the status quo by pioneering solutions that create lasting change.
Social Bite began life as a small coffee shop in Edinburgh, Scotland, in August 2012. We became involved in the homelessness issue when a young homeless man named Peter came into the coffee shop one day to ask us for a job.
When we offered this young man employment, this was the origin of an unexpected 10 years of charitable work and campaigning on the homelessness issue. We believe in the power of supportive employment to transform people’s lives; our ongoing aim is for 1 in 4 of our team to have come from a background of homelessness.
We started to offer more jobs to people experiencing homelessness as we got more engaged in the issue. After a few months, we introduced a “Pay it Forward” system in the coffee shops where customers could buy some food in advance for people experiencing homelessness to get later on.
Good food has always been at the heart of what we do. This has led to us becoming a major employer of people experiencing homelessness and extreme barriers to employment, as well as one of the largest providers of free freshly made free food in the UK to those in need. We typically provide over 180,000 items of food and hot drinks every year through our network of coffee shops and distributed over 800,000 food packs during the pandemic. We also ran a restaurant, Vesta Bar & Kitchen, formerly called ‘Home’, from 2016 until 2023. Vesta provided weekly sit-down meals for an average of 40 people experiencing homelessness and food poverty, as well as training opportunities for our supported employees.
Over the years our work has been visited and supported by George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sir Chris Hoy, Catherine, Princess of Wales, Malala Yousafzai, Martin Kemp, Emma Willis, and many others.
Since Social Bite began, we have always been about inviting people to join the movement to end homelessness in whatever way they can, whether that is volunteering, paying forward lunch for someone else, donating skills or resources, or taking part in one of our mass-participation events.
From 2016 to 2018, we organised mass participation fundraising sleep out events called Sleep in the Park. These events have seen over 18,000 people sleep out to call for an end to homelessness. The events have raised over £8 million which has been invested in a range of flagship projects to try and bring an end to homelessness.
With funds raised from Sleep in the Park events, in 2018, we launched The Social Bite Village. For this project we took on some vacant council-owned land in Edinburgh and built a small village made up of 11 two-bedroom prefabricated houses and a large community hub. Today this village is home to a vibrant community of people helping each other get back on their feet. We partner with the Cyrenians to provide dedicated on-site support with links to employment, education and community activities.
We also created and launched Scotland’s Housing First program. For this program we secured 830 mainstream flats across 5 cities to provide permanent homes to Scotland’s rough sleepers and alongside The Scottish Government, we helped to fund wrap-around support to help people sustain their tenancies. More than 1333 people have now been given homes with support, and the response has been adopted by all local authorities in Scotland.
In 2019 our Co-Founder, Josh Littlejohn MBE, established the charity The World’s Big Sleep Out which took our work global, by organising an international campaign called The World’s Big Sleepout, which took place in 52 cities throughout the world. The events saw 60,000 people sleep out on a cold December night to raise awareness and funds on the issue of homelessness. The World’s Big Sleep Out closed both Times Square NYC and Trafalgar Square in London for this, with Will Smith and Dame Helen Mirren telling a bedtime story to participants that slept out. Social Bite hosted the local Edinburgh event in Princes Street Gardens.
Starting in 2014 we have opened our shops every Christmas Day and Christmas Eve to host festivities with all the trimmings, for people who might not have anywhere else to go. Since 2020 our annual Festival of Kindness collects gifts and donations throughout the festive period to support for people who are vulnerable or experiencing homelessness.
2021 saw us being able to host one of the few events able to take place that year, with the launch of our first-ever Break the Cycle with Sir Chris Hoy. Over the past two years, more than 1500 people have pedaled for change across Scotland.
In 2021, we consolidated learnings and launched our UK-wide employment programme. Jobs First provides real job opportunities with wrap-around support to people who have experienced homelessness. We have already supported over 28 formerly homeless people into employment and are working with 9 employers across the UK to transform access to the job market for those who have previously been excluded.