have enjoyed the delicious fare from our
and enabled us to provide over
with a safe space to belong and over
as their recipe for building a healthy life.
Back in March, the Covid crisis forced us to close 5 of our 8 cafes, reduce staff numbers significantly, cut back heavily the hours of the remaining team and scale down our bakery, roastery and catering operations. We've now also closed our Melbourne Central café, due to the Stage 4 lockdown.
Unfortunately, we don't expect any improvement in this situation until next year. And it's tough times for everyone, not just STREAT.
However, we've still been supporting young people, albeit more remotely than usual, and our beautiful Cromwell Street and Parkville cafés are open for take-aways. We're also doing home delivery of delicious meals, fresh bread, coffee and groceries and our kitchens have cooked thousands of meals for vulnerable Victorians.
As ever, we are wrapping our arms around those in our community who desperately need help.
But now, STREAT itself desperately needs your support.
One of the best ways to support STREAT during this crisis, is to order a 'Box of Family Goodness', and share it with your family.
Doing this, just once each month until Christmas, will help us survive.
We could also deliver a box to your parents, children or someone else stuck at home – a heart-warming gift for those you love. These monthly acts of goodness, this generous sharing of food with your family, will help sustain STREAT, our staff and our young people – our family.
Please click the 'Order Now' button above and order Your Box of Family Goodness.
Many of Melbourne's other wonderful Social Enterprises are also struggling to survive. In addition, it is estimated an extra 250,000 emergency meals may be needed each week in Victoria - due to the Pandemic.
In April, a large group of Social Enterprises started responding to these challenges and formed the Moving Feast collective - STREAT is a founding member. We're working together, making and delivering nutritious and culturally appropriate meals to many thousands of vulnerable Victorians – even growing produce for those meals.
This work, with large amounts of support funding, will also help save our own organisations. Post the crisis, we’ll continue to work together to recover and rejuvenate the food system and help make families more resilient through growing food at home.
Moving Feast has already planted 760,000 seeds and made and delivered 120,000 meals and food packages! And there is so much more to do. You can be part of this collective response - details are on the:
Thanks so much for your on-going care and support. We will survive, but it's going to be tough for a while longer.
Above all, please take care of yourself and your family and stay connected.
Every week our cafes, catering company, kitchen, bakery and coffee roastery serve up deliciousness to thousands and thousands of Melburnians. Our food is hand-made fresh each day and contains no added preservatives and other nasties. Our amazing coffees from around the world are small batch roasted on our vintage Probat roaster and then brewed fresh by our team of baristas.
We believe all young people should get the opportunity to thrive, no matter their starting point. That's why each year we provide intensive wrap-around support, vocational training and real work experience to hundreds of young people who really need a hand. In short, as a social enterprise, food and coffee are our means, but stopping youth homelessness and disadvantage is our end.
Would you like to hear some of the amazing stories of our young people? Or find out more about STREAT's history and social enterprise model? Or maybe you'd like to read some of our case studies, or about our impact? Maybe you want to get involved? Anyway, there's always loads of amazing stuff happening at STREAT and here's where you can find out all about it.
A number of years ago, a bunch of us – chefs and baristas, a clinical psych, social workers and assorted others – downed some macchiatos and got to working trying to stop youth homelessness and disadvantage.
It goes without saying that we're passionate about food and coffee. In fact, we've now collectively imparted thousands of hours of our hospitality knowledge to our young people. But we’re also passionate about giving young people the personal support, life skills, training and real work experience they need to start achieving their personal goals.
We're determined that our young people should gain the transferrable employability skills that will stand them in good stead in any industry. We teach them how to set a daily routine and turn up to work on time. How to work constructively as a member of a small team. How to be clean and well presented. How to overcome their fears and engage with the customers they serve. How to put on a smile and have a great workplace attitude – even on the days you really, really don’t feel like it.
But of even greater importance to us, is that our young people learn how deeply we care for them. We want them to know that not just our cafe doors – but also our hearts – remain open to them, no matter what. Yeah, we know that these sentiments sound a bit Hallmark-cardish. But this is the simple truth.
Delicious food and coffee made fresh each day.
From the crack of dawn our baristas, bakers and chefs start welcoming our first loyal cafe customers in Melbourne Central, RMIT, RACV and Cromwell St. Whether you're in a rush to get to work or uni, or you're just wanting to kick back for a few hours in a friendly environment, we understand that as a Melburnian, you'll be wanting nothing but the best food and coffee.
Whether it's a Board room lunch for 15 people, or a canape function for 150, STREAT can provide you with deliciousness. Our food is hand-made fresh each day. It's natural, and doesn't contain preservatives and other nasty stuff. We also proudly source seasonally and from local suppliers who love their produce as much as we do.
We ethically source specialty grade beans from around the world and small batch roast them on our beautiful vintage Probat roaster. Our multi award-winning blends and single origins are perfect for cafes, work and home - order online or grab a bag of beans at one of our cafes. At Cromwell Street you can meet our head roaster Zach, book into his next cupping session and also buy all your coffee paraphenalia.
We change the menu for young people who really need a hand.
We work with each young person to understand their hopes and dreams for the future. From there we can then provide the necessary care and 'wrap-around' supports for them to achieve this. This includes a range of vocational training programs, life skills, social and creative activities, individualised case management and support accessing specialist services (like drug and alcohol, mental health, housing and juvenile justice to name just a few).
Our young people have often struggled with a range of really complex issues. Like homelessness. Or mental health issues. Or drug and alcohol abuse. Or family violence. Or time in prison. Or long stretches of time being disconnected from school or other community groups. But no matter what their starting point, they daily inspire us with their hopes and dreams for the future. We'd love you to meet some of them.
If you're a young person aged between 16-25 years, and you really need to be given the support, training, and work experience to get a job, then this page is for you! We have a whole bunch of different classes that run each year, but we also offer other really flexible work experience opportunities. Check out what's coming up soon.
There's always lots of things happening at STREAT.
From the outset we were determined to build a scalable social enterprise model to address youth disadvantage. We've learned a lot as we've built our portfolio of hospitality businesses and also kept pushing ourselves to innovate. This includes pioneering work in Australian impact investment where we've successfully engaged a wide range of investors and other supporters. But we're just warming up. And we'd love to share with you our far bigger dreams!
In 2014 we were gifted an historic Melbourne property by benefactor Geoff Harris. It's called Cromwell St. and been totally redeveloped into an amazing youth training academy, 80-seat cafe, artisan bakery, coffee roastery, catering business, function venue and our head office. It enables us to now support and train over 250 young people each year and will also help STREAT scale to complete financial self-sufficiency. Come find out more.
Pour yourself a quiet cuppa and then go to our stories page. You'll see and read about the fears and dreams of our amazing young people. Then maybe you'd like to come and share a meal or coffee, order catering from us, make a donation, partner with us, come and volunteer, join our mailing list, connect with us on social media, partner with us, invest with us. Your call.
We're a registered Australian charity and any donation you make over $2 is tax deductible.
STREAT makes a dollar stretch a long way. And for every dollar you give us as a donation, we generate a further $3 within our businesses. That's the beautiful reality of supporting a social enterprise!
Your $2 could provide lunch for a young person on their training day. Your $5 could pay the train fare for a young person to get to work. Your $10 could allow a young person to go on an excursion or social activity. Your $50 could pay the course fee for a young person to get their Certificate II in Kitchen Operations. Your $250 would cover all the major expenses (excluding staff costs) of one young person going through the program.
An interdisciplinary team with big ideas and challenges.
STREAT has a passionate, active and committed Board, that not only understands its responsibilities under the Corporations Act and takes ultimate responsibility for all matters relating to the running of STREAT, but that does so in strong partnership with STREAT’s management.
The Board comprises directors with expertise across key areas including community development, psychology, youth mental health, hospitality, social enterprise, business, vocational training, law and accountancy.
Bec flipped a coin to determine if she'd become a scientist or artist. Twenty years later she's not surprised to have co-founded and be running a hospitality social enterprise to stop youth homelessness. The thread running through all the projects she does both professionally and personally is a love of bringing together unlikely collaborators to try and address seemingly intractable issues. She says these groups of people are often characterised by four key traits - they dream big, they're creative, they get shit done, and they have loads of fun together.
We're an ecclectic bunch of about 60 people - chefs, baristas, bakers, roasters and a really diverse support team that help both our young people and our businesses thrive. What we've also learnt consistently over years of research, is that our young people - and also our customers - keep coming back to STREAT because the team is so friendly and creates a place where people feel they belong. We're just as much a social inclusion program as we are a stopper of homelessness. We're proud of this.