Starbucks marks the second anniversary of its Community Café Programme, helping support over 2,300 people across the UK every week.

This August marked the second anniversary of the Starbucks Community Café Programme and Starbucks continued commitment to the communities close to its stores.

Launched in 2017, in partnership with Neighbourly, the Community Café Programme supports 20 dedicated local community spaces up and down the UK, with product donations of café essentials such as coffee, tea, biscuits and syrups. Neighbourly connects each Community Café with a local Starbucks store team, the team then work directly with the not-for-profit to facilitate the product donation, helping sustain their integral community space.

To mark the date, we recently visited one of the first cafés to be supported by the scheme, the K9 Community Café in Ely. Led by Chris Kent and her dedicated team of volunteers, the K9 Café welcomes all members of the local community, from children to young people and families. Since 2008, the café has acted as a friendly and safe space to socialise as well as seek support for range of challenging situations.

The ‘K9’ element of the café emerged as some local residents enjoyed bringing their dogs to the café. Now, the dogs provide important support to those living with physical and mental learning difficulties and those suffering from social isolation. For many, coming to the café helps alleviate loneliness and their love of dogs helps to unite the visitors.

How to support the programme:

• You can support your local community cafe by popping in for a cup of tea or coffee. You'll find the cafés taking part in this programme, here.
• Follow and share their project pages across your social channels with the hashtag #StarbucksCommunityCafe.
• If you're a community cafe looking for support, get in touch on [email protected]