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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Sophie Buchan

Martin Compston supports Social Bite as they open first London café

Martin Compston has shown his support for Social Bite as they open their first café in London.

The actor, from Greenock, is best known for his role on BBC's Line of Duty as Steve Arnott and is currently starring as Bram in ITV's Our House.

Social Bite is a registered charity in Scotland which seeks to alleviate homelessness including by raising funds through their cafés.

They are spread across major cities and have now opened their doors for the sixth time in Westminster, Glasgow Live reports.

A 'Pay It Forward' scheme will also be launched to allow customers to buy a hot drink and/or hot meal for a homeless person.

Posting on social media to launch one their new opening, Social Bite wrote: "Hello London.

Today we open the doors to our new coffee shop in the heart of the city!

"It will provide jobs with wrap-round support to people who have been homeless.

"We are expanding our impact and scaling up to truly break the cycle of homelessness."

Compston joined other familiar faces such as Kate Garraway and Martin Kemp along with a number of locals.

The actor shared a picture of himself with a wrap from the café on his Twitter account.

Taking to their website to explain how it all began, Social Bite said: "Founded by Josh Littlejohn MBE and Alice Thompson, Social Bite began life as a small cafe in Edinburgh, Scotland, in August 2012.

"We became involved in the homelessness issue, when a young homeless man named Peter came into the cafe one day to ask us for a job.

"When we offered this young man employment, this was the origin of an unexpected 9 years of charitable work and campaigning on the homelessness issue.

"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 cafes where customers could buy some food in advance for people experiencing homelessness to get later on.

"This has led to us becoming a major employer of people experiencing homelessness and extreme barriers to employment, as well as the largest provider of free freshly made free food in the UK to those in need.

"We normally give out over 140,000 items of food and hot drinks every year through our network of cafes and have distributed over 800,000 food packs during the pandemic alone.

"We also have a restaurant, Vesta Bar & Kitchen, formerly called ‘Home’, which opened in 2016 and which provides weekly sit-down meals for an average of 40 people experiencing homelessness and food poverty, as well as training opportunities for our supported employees."

Replying to their posts on social media, one said: "Just saw this on the news! This is a great idea.

"I have noticed that homelessness seems to keep increasing and it's hard to know what to do about it. I hope more of these stores will open."

Another added: "Well done, and hope it as much of a success as your Edinburgh shop. will certainly call in when iam over in the uk!"

A third commented: "So good to see Social Bite growing!"

You can find your local Social Bite here.

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