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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Politics
Lawrence Glyn

Customers are homeless and struggling: My Wigan Pier Story

Lawrence Glyn, 52, runs Toast Love Coffee, a community cafe which aims to bring people together through conversations in the Harehills area of Leeds.


A former teacher, he tells Maryam Qaiser how they support people living in poverty and social isolation.

We have different people with different needs come through our doors.

We work on a 'pay as much as you like' basis for food and drink so we sometimes get customers who are homeless or financially struggling.

One person, who was homeless, came in for a hot drink and snack and paid 17p. He delved deep into his pockets to pay some money towards his food.

The thing I love about working in the cafe, is that it is similar to my teaching days, I am working with different people from different cultures.

The cafe only serves vegan and vegetarian food because we want everyone to feel welcome, so by keeping it vegetarian, people who are Muslim and Jewish can feel comfortable knowing that there will be no meat and fish in the kitchen.

We want this cafe to be a place where people can network and come together with people they have not met before.

Have Your Say

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We are retracing the journey George Orwell made in his book, The Road to Wigan Pier to tell modern stories of working and unemployed poverty.

They'll appear in a regular series in the Daily Mirror newspaper and here, on our special anniversary website.

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