Brands to Buycott
Buycotting is where you actively choose to buy a brand’s products or services because you believe in and support their policies, rather than boycotting the ones that you don’t. It’s like voting with your wallet and these are the best places in London to do it.
London is filled with charities, non-profits and social enterprises doing their bit to make the city a better place, through donating profits to good causes, running training programmes to help people with learning difficulties, ex-offenders or those experiencing homelessness get into employment, and combating loneliness and isolation by providing spaces for local communities to gather.
There are food businesses like the Dusty Knuckle and KERB who, as well as turning out banging baked goods and street food, are providing employment opportunities for people attached to the justice system and supporting refugee- and female-led street food entrepreneurs in their growth. Coffee is another great vehicle for change, with organisations like Change Please, Old Spike Roastery and Fair Shot using barista training programmes to teach people the skills they need to get jobs. And there are plenty of cafes running pay-it-forward schemes where you can help provide hot drinks and food for vulnerable people in need.
All you have to do to support these organisations is swing by for a coffee, a pastry or a meal – things you’d do in your everyday life anyway – so it really couldn’t be easier to help make a difference.
After operating out of a shipping container in the Dalston car park of the Bootstrap offices, The Dusty Knuckle has since expanded into one of those former offices, with a bakery, cafe, and a terrace where they run pizza nights in the summer and regular guest chef Dusty Dinners, and a second cafe and pizza restaurant in Haringey. The bakery turns out a range of breads and pastries, including pain au chocolat, morning buns, potato bread, and feta & honey swirls. The monster sarnies, made using their signature bubbly bread and filled with everything from lemongrass pork meatballs and sambal mayo to mapo tofu and sweet potato. What makes The Dusty Knuckle especially great is their support for young Londoners who are attached to the justice system, coming out of custody, or are asylum seekers, through their successful work experience and employment programmes.
The Lambs Conduit Street Redemption Roasters is the flagship site of this cafe-cum-social enterprise. Redemption Roasters opened in 2017, serving up coffee using the beans from their own roastery that functions out of a young offender’s institute, providing the detainees with valuable skills in the vibrant coffee market. Besides your morning latte, you can grab some pastries, cakes or lunch here before parking yourself outside to do some Grade-A people-watching.
“Tell you what, why don’t we go and grab a bite to eat…we’ll go to that new place, the one in the prison, yeah Brixton Prison”. Yep, you can go and eat at The Clink Restaurant right inside HMP Brixton. Providing inmates with the tools and skills to help gain employment on their release, The Clink serves up a proper restaurant quality menu cooked and served by prisoners, so it’s sure to be a unique dining experience. A daring first date perhaps?
A cultural embassy in the heart of London, Palestine House is a place for community – as well as operating as a co-working space with various memberships available, the venue hosts workshops, discussions and arts events that showcase the spirit and heritage of Palestine. In addition to funding the cultural programme and the workspace, memberships allow Palestine House to act as a venue for crisis fundraising and produce Gaza Cola (with all profits going to humanitarian relief efforts on the ground in Gaza). The venue also serves a sharing brunch on Sundays, featuring dishes like hummus, falafel, mutabal, mousaka, halloumi, foul, and labneh.
Old Spike is the UK’s first social enterprise, speciality coffee roastery with spots in Peckham, Piccadilly and Elephant & Castle. Their mission is to help reduce homelessness in the UK and they’re doing it through brewing fresh, seasonal coffee. Do good and get your caffeine fix, sounds ideal to us.
Home Kitchen in Primrose Hill was opened in the autumn of 2024 to help socially vulnerable transform their lives by providing employment. In the year that it operated under Executive Chef Adam Simmonds, the restaurant employed 16 individuals affected by homelessness. Now the social enterprise is getting a new lease of life as the space flips into 130 Primrose, with Monica Galetti stepping into the Exec Chef role and Head Chef Eric Zhang leading the kitchen. Like its previous incarnation, 130 Primrose will recruit people with experience of homelessness, offer them paid work, accredited training, and opportunities to progress further in the hospitality industry. The 50-cover restaurant will be open all day, all week, serving a Mediterranean-inspired menu, with salads and sandwiches also available at lunchtimes, and charcuterie and cheese on offer in the evenings.
Social enterprise Fat Macy’s offers training schemes that help those in temporary accommodation get the skills they need to go into the hospitality biz and transition into their own homes. One of the ways the organisation does that is through its Lebanese-inspired restaurant, natural wine bar and bottle shop Sohaila in Shoreditch, where you can feast on dishes like labneh with chilli butter, aubergine maghmour with green pilaf, confit cumin garlic on toast, beef shish barak with chilli butter, falafel & hummus on homemade pitta, and salted tahini & chocolate tart.
Trampoline is a cafe with a powerful mission; not only does it serve expertly-made coffee and delish hot meals, like curries and thalis from Yogi’s Sri Lankan Kitchen, Trampoline also provides employment to refugees, giving them valuable experience and a springboard from which to start a fulfilling career. As well as creating a space where everybody feels welcome, through partnerships with organisations like Groundwork London, Thomas Franks and The Hotel School, the cafe helps the refugee community into meaningful employment.
Change Please, a coffee company that works to end homelessness, and Toast Ale, a sustainable brewer that uses surplus bakery bread to make their beer, have joined forces for their first joint venture. Good Company is a café and taproom that serves coffee, cakes, hot food, beers and other drinks from brands that share Good Company’s ethos. The cafe also provides training opportunitites to those experiencing homelessness, continuing Change Please’s mission of breaking the unemployment cycle.
Fair Shot is a registered UK charity that works to transform the lives of young adults with learning disabilities by equipping them with all the tools they need to enter the hospitality workforce. Founded by Bianca Tavella in 2019, the organisation runs a traineeship programme out of their cafe, which is followed up by an employment programme that connects their trainees with partners looking to employ them. Since launching their first in-person Fair Shot Café on South Molton Street back in December 2021 (they’ve since expanded to the larger current site in Covent Garden), they’ve supported 45 young adults out of the unemployment cycle with 100% of their job-ready graduates currently in employment. Drop by the cafe for coffee, cakes, toasties, sarnies and soups and help support even more people into work.
Sister to Idea Fabrika site in Athens, this Stokey cafe is a non-profit hub that’s dedicated to enriching the lives of the local community. As well serving traditional and affordable Turkish and Kurdish food, Idea Fabrika is somewhere you can come to connect with people, engage in culture and learn something new – the venue runs courses on everything from English lessons to boxing.
KERB know a thing or two about running a street food market – they’ve popped up across London and been home to some mega traders over the years – and now they’ve gone indoors with a massive covered market housed in a former banana warehouse in Seven Dials. The market is home to a range of traders like Bleecker, Jollof Mama, Yaay Yaay, Stakehaus, and the team behind Camden’s Cheese Bar have Pick & Cheese, a conveyor belt set-up where you can choose from 25 different British cheese and condiment combos. KERB’s markets and business development arms have become part of the not-for-profit social enterprise KERB+, allowing the organisation to further support people who had been facing barriers to entry in the hospitality industry and empower more refugee-led and female-led businesses.
Founded in 2015 with a single coffee cart, Change Please now has ten coffee bars across the city and offers its coffee for wholesale too. The social enterprise works to tackle homelessness through a barista training programme, giving people skills as well as a living wage job, accommodation advice and onward employment opportunities. Across 2023 – 2024, over 200 people were put through barista training and the organisation secured more than 11,300 hours of living wage employment.
No guilt, just good! Social Bite is a non-profit café on a mission to end homelessness and every coffee you buy helps. It works like this: customers can “Pay it Forward,” funding free meals and support for people experiencing hardship. From housing and employment to food and tailored help, Social Bite empowers people to rewrite their stories. It’s located in The Strand so if it’s near your commute or office, consider making the switch.
In Ealing, 97.8% of adults with learning disabilities are unemployed – a number that should stop anyone in their tracks. Mahaba Café is doing something about it. This welcoming spot supports neurodivergent individuals with workplace training while building genuine connection within the community. Every cuppa you order fuels their mission to open doors and challenge the stats, one barista at a time.
Coffee and conversation go hand in hand at Head Room, a social enterprise café from mental health charity Jami. Every day, they host free groups and workshops that support mental health and reduce stigma, creating a safe space for open dialogue. But don’t worry – the food’s as comforting as the atmosphere. They’ve go homestyle specials, fresh bakes, a kids menu and top-tier takeaway coffee. Good food, great cause, and a side of mental wellness.
Paper & Cup is the kind of café you hope to stumble upon – award-winning coffee, vintage finds, and real purpose behind every purchase. Just off Shoreditch High Street, this social enterprise trains people in recovery from addiction, helping them gain skills, experience and a sense of direction. The bonus? You might walk away with a second-hand book, a one-off vintage shirt, or even the very mug you drank from. Everything here supports recovery and homelessness initiatives – can’t argue with that now can you?
Part of the Regenerate family, an organisation that helps young people to thrive, Feel Good Coffee is a business that supports local young people facing barriers to employment into work. Across the Battersea coffee cart and the Southfields coffee house, Feel Good gives young people the chance to work as baristas as well as access to training and mentoring support. For every coffee sold, Feel Good funds a meal for a child in need – over the past year, the organisation has employed 31 young people and provided over 78, 500 meals to partner projects.
Cafe Palestina is serving up a real taste of Palestine in Kentish Town. Swing by in the daytimes for coffee, cakes, soups and Palestinian mezze, or head down for vegan nights on Thursdays, supper clubs on Fridays or brunch on Sundays. The cafe also sells Palestinian-made products, like pottery, textiles, soaps, herbs and olive oils, and it hosts events like book clubs and embroidery workshops. The venue supports Camden-based human rights charity CADFA (Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association), which works to promote human rights in Palestine.
As the name suggests, The Colombian Coffee Company is all about showcasing the best coffee that Colombia produces. There are always a few varieties of single origin coffees on offer in the cafes, as well as Colombian pastries like empanadas and arepas, and you can get their coffee on subscription too. The business supports coffee-growing communities in Colombia by paying above market price to the farmers they work with, educating them about accessing the specialty coffee market abroad, and investing in creative projects that tell the stories of these communities.
