Our Story
The Little Social are social enterprise cafés powered by Youth Projects brewing the finest espresso and serving nutritious food across Melbourne. Our cafes exist to empower young people to lead meaningful lives through hands-on skills development and mentoring from industry experts.
Young people have a platform at The Little Social to build their self-confidence, gain key employability skills, and genuine work experience in a supportive and judgment-free environment.
Our Purpose
Our purpose is simple – to empower young people to lead meaningful lives. And everything we do centres around this purpose.
Through mentorship from industry experts, we help create realistic pathways to meaningful employment and upskilling pathways for young people. Our individually tailored training promotes a boost in overall wellbeing & confidence, all while quantifying the social & economic return on investments.
Our customers can create real social change by sprinkling kindness into someone else’s day through our pay-it-forward initiative. People can anonymously purchase an item from our menu and pay it forward to someone experiencing homelessness. A small gesture that leads to a powerful impact on someone in their darkest hour.
Our People
Our changemakers are committed to creating real social change with every purchase.
Our team share their skills and knowledge with the future generation and have the skills to help create a unique and socially conscious experience behind every purchase at The Little Social. Our team’s talent, expertise and passion for coffee and food emulate through every product. We bring in people that have social justice in their blood, live and breathe café culture and know what it takes to change the world. Our people get it.
Our Products
Community is a big part of who we are and why we exist, hence our commitment to local alliances. Everything on our menu is sourced as locally as possible (helping to reduce our carbon footprint too!) We used locally sourced and sustainable products, and ensure our suppliers’ values are strong, their product is local, and their business is kind.
All of our cafes use 100% recyclable and compostable packaging for all of our takeaway items thanks to our friends at BioPak. All of our coffee cups? Yep, recyclable. Our takeaway salad bowls? Tear them down and throw them into your worm farm once you have finished. We are committed to minimising and reducing the amount of food waste, tree-based paper and nasty plastics going back into the environment. Our cafes offer eco-friendly alternatives and we encourage all of our customers to bring their own reusable vessels.
Our Profits
We proudly trade to intentionally tackle social problems, improve communities and provide young people with access to employment and training. Our profits are re-invested back into our social purpose, and into health and homelessness services at Youth Projects. Since opening our first café in 2020, we’ve re-invested over $180K back into critical services and programs to tackle social problems.
