This season is all about giving. It goes without saying but we are here to make things easier this Christmas to get everything checked off your list, with plenty of gifting ready options for everyone you love. But it felt right to do that bit extra this year so we got our heads together as a team to think about how we could help out further. It didn’t take long before we came up with our festive campaign to do more for you and give back whilst we're at it. 

The best part of gifting is seeing the look on your loved one's face when they open it up, right? We wanted to make it even easier to make an impact this festive season by wrapping your chosen gift in style to make it look it's best, but also to give back to someone in need. And it was an obvious who we wanted to support - Social Bite. 

Who are Social Bite? 

Social Bite began life as a small café here in our hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland back in August 2012. After offering a young homeless man employment, they began on a 9-year journey of charitable work and campaigning on the homelessness issue. Since then, they’ve become a pioneering force for good as a major employer of homeless people as well as the largest provider of freshly made free food in the UK to those in need.  This winter they want to provide accommodation, support and 250,000 food and essentials packs to homeless people, bringing their distribution of emergency food packs and essential items to over 1 million since the pandemic began. It’s a scalable, sustainable and baseline kind movement and we are fully behind everything they do.

Why are we keen to support?

After living in Hong Kong for many years, Cat came back to Edinburgh and was saddened to see the amount of homeless people in her home city. Passing the Social Bite café, she saw their initiative to pay for a meal on Christmas Day, or any day, for someone who may otherwise be without and donated the nominal £5. And as a team we’ve supported in different ways over the past few years and knowing you all, we thought you might like to do the same. Because it’s not always easy to know how best to give back.

This Christmas Social Bite are encouraging everyone to create a movement of kindness to spread festive goodwill to those who need it most. And here’s where you can get involved. Pay for gift wrap at checkout online or in store and we'll donate it in full to the charity. For every £5 kindly donated, they will provide either a Christmas Dinner or an emergency food pack to those in need. In a season of togetherness, let’s find more ways to care for each other. 

How will it work? 

We’ve designed our own custom wrapping paper and tags in-house, inspired by the new store and keeping things simple, calm and quiet. No glitter needed. Everything is fully recyclable (including our tape!) so you can minimise on waste whilst still making someone feel special. Our tags explain to the person you are gifting that in turn this gift has helped to give a meal to someone in need. We’ll wrap it all for you in store or before we send out your order online! One less thing for you to have to think about in this busy season.

Don’t need wrap, but want to support?  

If you aren’t in need of a gift wrap service, or would rather get creative yourself, we also have a donate station at our till in the store where you can tap to donate which goes straight to Social Bite. And if you’d rather offer a non-monetary donation, this amazing enterprise are currently set up in central Edinburgh and Glasgow where you can drop off a present to someone who is vulnerable and place it under their Tree of Kindness. Want to know more? Check out locations and the items in greatest need here. We’ll be doing the same!

 

This year has certainly been exceptional, but with your generosity we’ve been able to support local charities - including the incredible Smart Works Edinburgh - to spread more kindness during a challenging time. And as always, everything we do is because of your support. We can’t thank you enough for sticking with us this year.

Have a question about our what our wrap entails, or want to know more about Social Bite? Here to chat and share more about what we do, always. Get in touch.