Watch: Social Bite turns 1 and is encouraging people to pay it forward to celebrate

Social Bite is celebrating its first birthday at its location on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, the coffee shop renowned for its charitable mission towards tackling homelessness and easing the consequences for those who face it. As part of their celebrations the team behind the enterprise is encouraging customers to participate it their ‘pay it forward scheme’, adding an extra few pounds onto their own bill to go towards a hot food or drink item for someone experiencing food poverty. 

Ahead of the event we spoke to Mel Swan, Social Bite’s commercial and operations director who reflected on their past year in operation:

“We turn one next week which is very exciting. We’re all grown up. It’s gone super super fast. We’re just trying to take stock of what we’ve achieved over the past year and think about what we can do to try and contribute towards our upcoming projects. It’s an amazing time to be part of Social Bite and what the guys in Glasgow have achieved and we’re super proud of them all. 

“It was quite the home coming in Glasgow because obviously we have coffee shops before. The people of Glasgow were really excited for us to come back and they have warmly welcomed us back with open arms and lots of people have came and visited us and helped support our mission. 

“We still do free food from Monday to Friday for people from a homeless background or people who need access to the free food service. Since we’ve opened in the last year we’ve given out over 20,000 food items and about 16,000 hot drinks. That’s quite significant, scary numbers when you think about it. 

“As part of our birthday celebrations, us turning one, we are encouraging all our customers to come in and pay it forward. Since we opened in Glasgow last year almost 6,000 of our customers have came in to pay it forward. The importance of that is that by paying it forward you are directly contributing towards the free food service that we run.”