In recent years charities and other cause based organisations have used the act and cost of buying a cup of coffee as a metric for change. Donate your cup of coffee to <insert charity here>. For the amount you spend on a coffee each morning you could <insert outcome for person here>. It’s a nice hook, people can relate to it. It’s a moderately simple sacrifice for a better good. However it has also become so overused as a marketing hook that the effect can be lost.
This doesn’t mean coffee isn’t a rich territory for inspiring people into action. Coffee plays a big part in a lot of peoples’ lives (mine included). We Walk the Line is a new social enterprise aiming to use coffee as a tool for engagement rather than something that should be sacrificed for a worthier cause. WWTL employs people who need a break in life; who are not in employment or education; who may be sleeping rough.
How? By giving people their own microbusiness. A portable coffee cart. Each vendor becomes part of a wider social franchise model that offers support with accounting, insurance, marketing and the benefits of bulk buying stock. There are lots of ways to support WWTL, not limited to: backing them on Kickstarter, booking a coffee cart at your next event, buying a coffee from one of their carts and of course, spreading the word.