This year's StreetSmart campaign in underway, with around 600 restaurants signed up to take part. Diners are encouraged to donate an optional £1, every penny of which is used to support homeless charities in their work. As the piece below explains, because the scheme is supported by LandAid, every penny is used to help those who need it. For more information, please visit streetsmart.org.uk
Like many things that come out of the Groucho, the origins of the charity StreetSmart are, its co-founder William Sieghart laughs, “a little hazy”. But then Sieghart can be forgiven; the Groucho’s good-time inducements aside, it was 25 years ago that he first came up with the idea.
“I was on the board and we wanted to do something for the Soho community,” the entrepreneur (and National Poetry Day founder) recalls. “And there used to be this guy, a homeless guy, who plonked himself in the club’s entrance. I stepped out over him after that meeting and later, as I was sat in the bath — where all the best ideas come — I thought, what if we stuck the pound on the bill, for the homeless? Much better than sponsoring a fellowship at one of the arts schools or whatever they were considering.”
Up and out of the bath, Sieghart took the idea to Mary-Lou Sturridge, then the Groucho’s managing director. “She helped it and she backed it, so the club agreed. Then I went to Ruth Rogers at the River Café and Pierre Condou, the Paramount restaurateur, and they agreed too.”
And so it came to be. That summer they decided that restaurants taking part would, in November and December, add an entirely voluntary £1 to diners’ bills on behalf of StreetSmart. It’s an addition that costs the restaurants nothing and the diner, well, a quid. That first year raised £51,000, with the likes of St John, Moro and Harvey Nichols on board.
It was also that year that Sieghart and Sturridge were introduced to Fay Maschler, this paper’s restaurant critic at the time. “Immediately I was entranced by the graceful simplicity of the idea,” remembers Maschler. “£1 levied on the bill for a restaurant table — not a person, a table — in the two months leading up to Christmas when giving is on our minds and the inequalities of life are brought into sharper focus.”
The Standard became a media partner, which it remains, and Maschler began writing to chefs to get them to sign up. “She remains our Godmother,” Sieghart says. Stephen Fry likewise added his weight and Sieghart enlisted fellow entrepreneur Nick Emley to lend a hand.
“He is a very energetic man,” Sieghart laughs. “And a foodie, a winey, all of those things, and he started knocking on doors.”
Not for one second have I worried that some of the proceeds would be spent on a pool and spa complex...
It all worked; the next year, 1999, £158,000 was the total, and it kept going from there. Today, a quarter of a century in, the charity has raised more than £12 million, and more than 2,000 restaurants across the country have been involved (D&D London, MeatLiquor, Selfridges and Ottolenghi are among the highest earners). LandAid sponsor the project, taking care of all administrative and operational costs, meaning, as Maschler puts it, “all of the money goes to the homeless and supportive bodies. Not for one second have I worried that some of the proceeds would be spent on a pool and spa complex…”
That money has gone towards funding beds, housing, mental health advice, job support, employment training, and the 250-or-so charities who’ve benefited from the money include The Felix Project, Glassdoor, Centre Point and St Basils. Perhaps one of the gladdening things is that StreetSmart tend to donate as locally as possible to wherever the funds are raised; restaurants in, say, Islington or Hackney are supporting those on the streets surrounding them.
Sieghart says the 25 years have dashed by. “You look back at those early photos and think, gosh, I used to have hair!” he smiles. “But the sense really comes when you visit the charities and see what they can do with the money.”
There is still, Sieghart concedes, a long way to go. “Homeless is just one word but it covers such an extraordinary range of people. There are the young, there are ex-servicemen, there are women who’ve escaped domestic abuse. There are charities who go out at night to rescue people before other people get their hands on them. It’s hard in the modern world to break out of homelessness, to get started again.”
The idea has been so successful that, Sieghart says, they’ve seen copycat schemes everywhere from South Africa to Australia to the US. It began with a bath, and has become, he says, “a delightful surprise. And, well, frankly, a privilege.” Twenty-five years and £12 million. It’s a wonder what a good lunch and a long soak can do.
