A Great Little pop-up
AGREAT Little Place is to open a pop-up coffee shop in Southport’s Ramada Plaza Hotel. The coffee shop is planned to open in early July thanks to a new collaboration between the charity-led café and the waterfront hotel.
It will be open every day through the summer from 10am until 4pm.
A Great Little Place at the Ramada will open in a space on the Promenade side of the hotel and will serve a selection of cakes and pastries as well as freshly brewed coffee.
As with the two existing Great Little Place cafés on London Street and Hoghton Street, it will operate to support the Autism Initiatives charity.
Three part-time jobs will be created, along with six work placement opportunities for people with autism.
Lisa Little, deputy general manager at the Ramada, said the partnership idea came from personal experience.
She said: “The reason behind it quite personal. My daughter is on the autistic spectrum. She’s 17 and in that transition of looking for employment and it’s not easy.
“Away from that, I was at an open day here [for recruiting staff] and met a young lad who had applied for more than 100 jobs in the local area and it hit home quite hard then.
“A Great Little Place is a great coffee shop in its own right, even putting aside the charity. They’ve built a great brand and are well loved in Southport. They are what they say they are – a great little place.
“It is really exciting and I’m hoping to be able to help a lot of people with it. I’ve not stopped smiling since we got the go-ahead.”
Sue Yarnell, who manages the Great Little Place cafés, said: “It’s really flattering to be asked to go with them. I think it’s because we share the same values of quality and customer service.
“We are a part of the Southport community and really do know our customers. We get to know them really well and they are the best cus- tomers in the world.”
Jon Gordon, enterprise manager for Autism Initiatives, said: “A Great Little Place is an award-winning social enterprise that is well established in Southport for over five years and is delighted to be involved in this exiting pilot. Ramada Plaza has also recently won awards and is using the opportunity to partner with local social enterprise as part of its commitment to the local social economy.”