Brighton restaurants urge diners to add £1 to bill for homeless

National charity StreetSmart has raised over £8.2 million across two decades, through adding a voluntary £1 to diners’ bills during November and December.

More than 500 restaurants across 22 cities are taking part in the campaign this year, and in Brighton Polpo, MEATliquor, Coggings & Co, The Jolly Sportsman and The New Steine Bistro have signed up.

Yianni Papoutsis, chef and co-founder of MEATliquor, who has raised over £138,000 for StreetSmart in the past five years, said: “The housing crisis we’re facing requires both individuals and businesses to support organisations and projects that help to ease the situation.”

Last year, 525 restaurants gathered to raise over £587,000 for homeless people. All of the funds raised are redistributed to local homeless projects, and not a single penny is taken for administration costs as Deutsche Bank, covers these.

Projects supported in Brighton include Friend’s First day centre, which runs skills and training programmes ranging from maths to photography and mental health awareness, The Clock Tower Sanctuary youth support centre for 16 to 24-year-olds and Off the Fence emergency night shelter.

Natalia Borg, development manager of Brighton-based charity The Clock Tower Sanctuary, said: “It is because of StreetSmart that the homeless young people we help are able to have their essential crisis needs met. Last year, 177 vulnerable young people accessed 4,454 nutritious meals and 1,144 hot showers – thank you to StreetSmart and all those that donated for making this possible.”

Supporter and patron Stephen Fry said: “StreetSmart’s ambitions are to connect the lucky citizen who can dine out with the unlucky ones for whom dining out means queuing up in front of food banks.”

The campaign runs from November 1 to December 31.

For a full list of participating restaurants, click here.