At the entrance to the Melbourne Central train concourse stands a small, freestanding café serving high quality takeaway coffees, sandwiches and sweets to passing foot traffic. This is the newest outpost of STREAT, a not-for-profit social enterprise providing hospitality training to homeless youth aged between 16 and 24.
Over an intensive six-month period, participants work two days a week with STREAT mentors working front of house, behind the coffee machine and in the kitchen. They also undergo social skills training and a hospitality qualification at William Angliss Institute.
Co-founder and CEO Rebecca Scott began planning the STREAT programme in 2009, while working with a social enterprise youth café in Hanoi, Vietnam. Back in Melbourne, she started with “a very lonely little food cart in Federation Square – it would constantly be pissing with rain.”
STREAT now encompasses a second cart in Melbourne Central, and cafés in the CBD and Flemington.