The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Dundee’s homelessness in entrepreneur’s sights
DINING: Social Bite founder believes his business model is a good fit for the city
Leading Scottish social entrepreneur Josh Littlejohn has outlined an ambitious vision to eradicate homelessness in Dundee.
The Social Bite sandwich shop chain founder, who is due to give a public lecture in the city on Thursday, is keen to open a restaurant in Dundee that will provide both free food and employment opportunities for homeless people.
The outlet will be based on Home in Edinburgh’s West End – the Scottish/ French restaurant Hollywood A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio visited during a trip to the capital late last year.
Home is owned by Social Bite’s parent charity but its day-to-day running is outsourced to a leading restaurant group.
It is a model that Josh believes can be replicated in Dundee.
“Social Bite is entirely under our management structure but, effectively, Home is a partnership model where Maison Bleue operate the restaurant,” he said.
“But it has the same social mission – diners can still ‘pay it forward’ for people to come and get a meal while also being able to offer training and employment opportunities.
“It is quite an attractive option for us as it outsources the hard bit.
“We see a flagship one of these in Dundee and would then want to use that as an anchor for some other innovative work in the area.”
Mr Littlejohn, who was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list for his services to entrepreneurship and social enterprise in Scotland, said discussions about setting up a Social Bite presence in Dundee were at an early stage.
“We have got some meetings in the diary with various people from Dundee who are trying to support us to make this a reality. We have had a lot of support from Andy Lothian of Insights and we have some discussions with him and various others over the next couple of weeks to try to move forward with plans to have a presence in Dundee.”
Diners can still ‘pay it forward’ for people to come and get a meal. JOSH LITTLEJOHN