Social Bite was founded over a decade ago in Edinburgh and is a charity working to support homeless people and reduce homelessness in Scotland and the UK.
Co-founder Josh Littlejohn has just released his first book where he discusses his journey over the past 10 years and his capitalist approach to tackling the homeless epidemic.
We caught up with him at the Social Bite premise on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.
Co-founder Josh Littlejohn has just released his first book where he discusses his journey over the past 10 years and his capitalist approach to tackling the homeless epidemic.
We caught up with him at the Social Bite premise on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.
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00:00 I'm Josh Littlejohn, co-founder of Social Bite.
00:02 So I've written a book, it's called Paying It Forward,
00:05 and it's all about my story really with Social Bite
00:07 over the last, over 10 years.
00:09 The journey we've been on,
00:10 from founding a little cafe in Edinburgh
00:12 through to kind of a nationwide chain of cafes,
00:15 all the big sleeper events
00:16 that have raised millions of pounds,
00:18 the villages that we've built and are looking to build.
00:21 So it's kind of chronicles that journey,
00:22 and it's really a business book for people
00:24 that are maybe interested or passionate about social issues
00:27 and trying to use their own creativity
00:29 and their own kind of entrepreneurialism
00:31 to tackle issues that they care about.
00:33 So I try and draw out lots of different lessons and advice
00:36 and things I've learned along the way,
00:38 and to try and hopefully encourage and inspire
00:40 and give some advice to people
00:41 that may be interested in doing something similar.
00:43 I think ever since I was a teenager,
00:46 I became quite politicized
00:48 and quite interested in social issues.
00:50 My little brother won tickets
00:52 to go to Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert
00:55 when we were like 14, 15.
00:57 So that was a big kind of moment
00:58 of becoming aware of issues of poverty
01:00 and these kind of campaigns.
01:03 Bob Geldof actually wrote the forward for this book,
01:05 so which was just a huge honor for me,
01:07 'cause that was a big inspiration for me.
01:09 So since a teenager,
01:10 I was quite passionate about those kind of things.
01:12 And then later in life, when I left university
01:15 and decided to set up a business
01:16 and we ended up opening Social Bite,
01:18 and originally that was just a little cafe
01:20 in the center of Edinburgh,
01:21 when a young homeless man named Pete wandered in one day
01:24 and asked us if he could have a job,
01:26 we kind of thought, wow,
01:27 that'd be a good way to make an impact
01:29 and we gave him a job in the kitchen.
01:30 So that kind of became the little origin,
01:33 the little spark that started all with Social Bite
01:35 and kind of set us off on a very different path
01:37 than we would otherwise have gone on.
01:39 Social Bite has kind of grown arms and legs really
01:40 over the last 10 years.
01:42 It's a big charity now and a big social enterprise
01:46 embarking on a range of different initiatives
01:47 to tackle homelessness.
01:48 So first and foremost, we have the cafe.
01:50 So we're sat here in our new Glasgow cafe,
01:53 which opened several months ago.
01:55 So the idea is to try and offer a great coffee
01:58 and a great service to customers,
01:59 but also to integrate a social impact.
02:01 So homeless people are invited into this cafe every day
02:04 for breakfast and for lunch,
02:06 and they can get something for free
02:07 that customers donate in advance
02:09 for them to come and get something later.
02:11 And we also offer jobs behind the counter there
02:14 for people that are struggling with homelessness.
02:15 So that's the cafe model.
02:17 Over the years, we've developed
02:18 different fundraising initiatives,
02:21 big sleep outs were the most notable one,
02:23 where we've had tens of thousands of people
02:24 sleeping out in freezing cold conditions to raise money.
02:28 And then we've been able to invest some of that money
02:30 in housing-based projects.
02:32 And so the most notable of those
02:34 is probably the Social Bite Village,
02:36 where we built a small community in Edinburgh
02:39 for homeless people to come and live
02:40 and get lots of support.
02:42 And a big aspiration we have now
02:44 is to try and build two more villages,
02:46 one in the West of Scotland
02:48 and another in Dundee we're looking at as well.
02:51 So that's kind of two big projects on the horizon.
02:53 I think the big message I'd like people to take away
02:56 is if you are a young person maybe leaving university,
03:00 or maybe you're a bit of a serial entrepreneur
03:02 and you love setting up different business ventures,
03:04 then you can do that to proactively tackle
03:08 a social issue that you care about.
03:09 In our case, it so happened to be homelessness,
03:11 but we're not short of social challenges in the world.
03:14 There's 101 things that people really care about.
03:17 And the thing that I learned over 10 years ago
03:19 and really lit a fire within me
03:21 is that you can use a business format
03:23 and be entrepreneurial to tackle these social issues
03:25 that we all care about.
03:26 So I just really hope the book gives some inspiration
03:29 for anyone that's interested in channeling
03:31 those kind of motivations
03:33 to try and make a difference in their community.
03:35 I mean, I think the big thing that I learned
03:37 is that we probably have a lot of preconceptions
03:41 about homeless people and the issue of homelessness
03:43 and a lot of wrong ideas really
03:45 that maybe they've got addicted to drink or drugs
03:48 or they've somehow made bad decisions.
03:50 It's quite a stigmatized issue.
03:52 So I think that can be a big preconception.
03:54 Maybe I had that preconception
03:56 before we set up Social Bite,
03:57 but kind of what I learned is
03:59 that people from homeless backgrounds
04:01 typically got dealt really, really awful cards
04:04 when they were just babies brought into the world.
04:06 Maybe they suffered really bad trauma.
04:09 Maybe they grew up in the care system,
04:11 really got dealt very difficult cards.
04:13 And I could start to compare that to the cards I was dealt
04:15 and just realized how lucky I've been.
04:17 And that was a big motivating factor.
04:19 So I think that was the first thing
04:21 is just having more of a compassionate understanding
04:23 about some of the challenges people have overcome
04:26 just to kind of still be on their feet.
04:28 And the second thing is,
04:30 you know, everyone's got their own stories
04:31 and everyone's got such value.
04:35 And we've learned, you know, through offering jobs
04:38 through the cafes and across the things we've done.
04:41 Some of these guys have become some of our best employees
04:44 and become really good friends and so on and so forth.
04:46 So if you give people a chance,
04:48 then they can blossom and thrive
04:50 in the same way anyone can.
04:51 So it's just about trying to open that door
04:53 for people that might otherwise feel
04:54 kind of shut out in the cold.
04:56 Well, I write a bit about in the book how,
04:58 you know, it's easy to maybe think that
05:03 if we pay our taxes and we vote in an election,
05:06 then we've kind of discharged our duties as citizens
05:11 and it's over to the government
05:12 to try and solve the social issues we face.
05:14 But, you know, I think the sad reality is that
05:17 if we do, that's the view we take,
05:19 then these social issues just won't ever be solved
05:22 because the government is typically unable, really,
05:26 to solve these intractable social issues.
05:29 And I think if you look at the business world,
05:32 the private sector world,
05:33 the pace of change that's created is just off the scale
05:38 and it's so much quicker
05:39 than what the government can achieve.
05:40 So for example, I write in the book around,
05:42 over about 20 years ago,
05:45 there was no such thing as a smartphone.
05:47 So no one had a smartphone only 20 years ago.
05:50 Now, only 20 years later, like one generation,
05:54 78% of the world, I think it's 6.4 billion people
05:59 wandering around with a smartphone.
06:00 So if you think about the rate of that change over 20 years,
06:03 it's unfathomable.
06:04 So I suppose the argument of the book is
06:07 if we could harness a bit of that entrepreneurial energy
06:10 and that kind of vast change
06:12 that is created in the private sector
06:14 and start directing that to the social issues that we face,
06:17 then we could really start to address those challenges
06:19 much quicker.
06:20 So I basically think we shouldn't be so passive
06:22 to think, oh, it's the government's responsibility.
06:23 I think if we all take responsibility
06:26 a bit into our own hands
06:27 and know that we have the power and the capacity
06:28 to create change in our community,
06:30 then that's the way change will really be created.