At the Doorstep Homeless Families Project in Hampstead, “there are children who are two or three years old that can’t even walk because they’ve been living in such confined spaces that they’ve never had the chance to learn”, Kimberley Coke, head of communications at StreetSmart, tells me. “It’s so sad. People can just get stuck in a rut with no way out.”
It’s the kind of story that stops you in your tracks. Doorstep – a charity that gives families living in cramped temporary accommodation somewhere to drop their children so they can play, run and simply be children – is one of the projects StreetSmart funds. And it’s one of the countless examples of how a small act – in this case, a voluntary £1 added to a restaurant bill – can ripple out to change lives.
StreetSmart’s annual campaign returned this weekend for its 27th year. What began as a modest Soho initiative has become a fixture in the UK hospitality calendar – a point of pride among participating restaurants, and a quiet nudge of conscience for those who haven’t yet signed up. You might have noticed it before without thinking much about it: a small extra line at the bottom of the receipt, a pound added to the total. But behind that figure is a nationwide effort that’s raised more than £15m to help tackle homelessness.
“It’s strictly just one pound on the bill,” Coke explains. “It’s not per cover, so even if it’s a table of six or eight, it’s still just a pound. If someone can afford to go out to eat – and at Christmas, when people are celebrating and going out with their colleagues, they’re likely to have seen a homeless person on their way to the restaurant or outside of the tube – being able to give a pound extra doesn’t seem too much.”
It’s not a gesture people tend to resist. In a year when diners are increasingly questioning service charges – where the money goes, who it benefits and whether they can take it off – StreetSmart’s model offers something refreshingly clear: every penny goes straight to helping people in need, supported by their sponsor LandAid. “No one has asked to take it off,” Coke says. “If anything, people might say, ‘Can we pay more?’ They might say, ‘Oh, actually, can we donate £10?’”
The premise is as elegant as it is effective. Restaurants display a small table card or note on the menu explaining that £1 will be added to the bill during November and December. That pound goes directly to StreetSmart, which then distributes it to local homelessness charities close to the restaurants taking part – meaning the money stays in the communities where it’s raised. For example, “Fortnum & Mason is a huge supporter – they raise loads of money. There’s a project nearby in St James’s Piccadilly church. It has a caravan in the garden which operates as a mental health unit for homeless people. It’s a free service for anyone that is struggling.” So the next time you’re tucking into afternoon tea, that extra £1 on your bill might be helping someone you walked past on your way there.
Since its beginnings in 1998, StreetSmart has grown into one of the most respected charity campaigns in the restaurant world, with around 650 venues taking part across the UK – 400 of them in London, where the need is especially stark. Last year, around 12,000 people slept rough in the capital – a 19 per cent increase on the year before – and more than 131,000 households in England are now living in temporary accommodation. The charity has supported more than 100 homelessness organisations, from youth housing projects to community kitchens, and last year raised £1,059,000: enough to provide 2,724 meals, 1,180 beds, 94 new jobs and 692 people with housing advice.
But this all started somewhere unexpected: at one of London’s most famous private members’ clubs. Not the sort of place you’d typically associate with grassroots social action. “It started because William [Sieghart, one of the co-founders] and a couple of others who lived and worked in London were all members of The Groucho Club and had noticed so much homelessness in Soho,” Coke says. “They suggested to the club: why don’t we add a pound to everyone’s bill to help these people who are literally sleeping rough outside the door?” The other co-founder, Mary-Lou Sturridge, ran The Groucho Club at the time, and now runs the Seaside Boarding House in Dorset, which still supports the StreetSmart campaign every Christmas.
Coke joined the story in 2019 after 11 years at Ten Concierge. “I was essentially booking rich people into restaurants,” she says with a laugh. That experience – knowing where people like to dine, which restaurants are full every night and, crucially, who controls the tills – turned out to be invaluable. “Someone from the Felix Project [which works with StreetSmart] reached out and said, ‘Would you help us sign up restaurants?’” she says. It was a perfect fit: she had the contacts, the knowledge and the drive to bring hospitality together for a common cause.
Her first year, however, was a baptism of fire. “It was quite interesting joining during Covid, because everyone was being told to go home and obviously homeless people didn’t have a home to go,” she tells me. “Restaurants were shut and all of the hostels we support couldn’t run because they weren’t allowed to sleep multiple people in the same room. So it was a really difficult time for StreetSmart and all the homeless projects.”
But rather than halt operations, many restaurants found creative ways to help. “It was really amazing to have restaurants do different things, like St John did a pie for StreetSmart. We auctioned a truffle with Wiltshire Truffles. Some restaurants and pubs turned into soup kitchens. People had a lot more time to think about homelessness and the people that didn’t have a home and how they could help.”
Now, five years on and amid a cost-of-living crisis that’s squeezed both households and hospitality to breaking point, StreetSmart is not only back at full strength but thriving. “We’d never made a million before, but now we’ve made a million two years in a row,” Coke says proudly. “We’re hoping to make a million again this year, maybe more, because we have more restaurants than ever signed up.”
While diners might picture homelessness as the people they see sleeping rough on the pavement, the reality is far broader – and far bleaker. “There’s an amazing project we work with called Providence Row, which I visited recently. It’s mind-blowing,” Coke says. “It opens its doors in the morning and there’s already a queue down the street. People sleeping rough queue up to go and have a shower, have a hot meal, a hot breakfast. Maybe they give them shoes and coats. A lot of them are actually going to work. They come in with their suitcases and their phone chargers. It’s not the stereotype of what people think a homeless person is; it’s just people who have been evicted or literally cannot afford rent in London.”
This is what Coke calls the “invisible homeless” – the thousands of people who don’t show up in official figures and who most of us walk past without ever realising. They’re not necessarily sleeping rough; they might be living in hostels, hotels, shelters or refuges, or sofa-surfing between friends. Many still go to work each day, trying to hold on to some sense of normality. For people like this, places such as Providence Row are a lifeline – somewhere to shower, eat, charge a phone, or simply be acknowledged.
“When someone at Provdience Row says, ‘How’re you doing? Here’s your breakfast’, that just makes their day,” Coke says.
Many of the invisible homeless are women, often with children, who avoid sleeping rough for fear of violence or exploitation. “Women make up a big part of the invisible homeless,” Coke says. Reports suggest 65 per cent of people in temporary accommodation are women, and one in 38 lone mothers face homelessness.
The figures are sobering. Crisis estimates that 60 per cent of single homeless people are “hidden” and may not show up in official figures. The UK’s rates of homelessness are among the highest in the developed world, and rising rents and the cost-of-living crisis are pushing more people into instability every day. “It’s only going to get colder,” adds Coke. “It becomes so dangerous for people to sleep rough when it’s minus degrees.”
For restaurants, taking part in StreetSmart is almost effortless. “For restaurants that don’t have the time, the energy or the people capacity to do their own charitable initiatives, StreetSmart does all of the hard work for them,” Coke says. By that, she means the charity provides everything: the table cards, the framework for collecting donations and the process of passing the money on. All the restaurants have to do is add up the totals and transfer the funds at the end of the campaign – StreetSmart handles the rest, including distributing the money to local projects. “And they’re joining something that’s really respected and love. It’s a real tradition to do it at Christmas. Supporting homelessness at Christmas just makes so much sense because it’s cold, it’s a generous time, people are spending more money. And it’s Christmas!”
Behind the campaign, unbelievably, is a tiny team of just three people. “What people don’t really know is that there are only three of us in the whole StreetSmart team,” she says. “It’s mental. It’s just me, Glenn [Pougnet, director] and Jenny [Blouet], who manages our campaigns. Her and Glenn have been manually sending out the cards from the office to over 600 restaurants!”
That such a small operation can generate more than £1m a year – and direct every penny to local projects – is testament to its simplicity and the generosity of both restaurants and their customers.
As we all pour into restaurants this winter, perhaps the £1 at the bottom of the bill will mean a little more. It could be a shower for someone heading to work, a safe night’s sleep, a space for a child to play, or a conversation that restores dignity. For those without a home, it’s more than spare change – it’s the start of something life-changing.
To see the restaurants taking part and learn how your £1 can help, visit www.streetsmart.org.uk
