Old Spike Opens Seventh London Café and Optimises Square’s Software to Power New Live Transaction-Linked Impact Dashboard

The community café chain partners with Square to power interactive dashboard showing how purchases across Old Spike’s seven cafés support training and employment for people experiencing homelessness

Old Spike, a London specialty coffee roaster and social enterprise, has opened its seventh London café in Southwark. The new Great Suffolk Street location displays what it believes to be the UK hospitality industry’s first live impact dashboard powered by global payments platform, Square.

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Photo courtesy of Old Spike

Old Spike’s central mission is to create employment for people experiencing homelessness. Its Barista Training and Employment Programme provides practical training, paid work placements and support into lasting work. Since opening in 2015, over 350 people have completed its training course.

The dashboard uses Square data to display to customers how their purchases across Old Spike’s seven cafés contribute to its training and paid work placement programme. Southwark is the first café to feature the dashboard, which Old Spike plans to roll out across all its sites.

When a purchase is made, Square automatically sends the information to the Impact Dashboard system, which records the transaction and calculates the relevant impact measures and KPIs. These figures are turned into visuals via an animation application so they can be displayed on public-facing screens. The dashboard showcases the number of trainees completing the programme, graduates securing lasting employment and the amount paid during work placements.

The clear and engaging animations for the dashboard screens were created by motion & data-visualization studio Algo, which developed a modular animation system powered by Rive, the same technology behind Spotify’s world-famous Wrapped campaign. Algo contributed its work pro bono to support the fight against homelessness.

Hadi, who received training through the programme, and now works at The Breakfast Club, one of Old Spike’s employment partners, reflects on his experience: “Old Spike’s training programme gave me both practical skills and confidence which I now use on a daily basis. Being given this opportunity meant that I didn’t need to go through a daunting employment screening process as I was able to transfer the skills I gained from the initial programme.”

Richard Robinson, CEO of Old Spike, said: "Old Spike was founded to do two things: roast exceptional coffee and create real paths into employment for people experiencing homelessness.

“Our dashboard shows customers in real-time how their purchases make a difference to people’s lives. They are directly contributing to training, paid work placements and lasting employment. Our coffee works harder because the better we perform as a coffee business, the more employment opportunities we can create.”

John O’Beirne, CEO of Square International, said: “Old Spike’s mission to help those experiencing homelessness move into stable, long-term employment is inspirational. We’re proud to help them use Square transaction data in a powerful way to tell their story, and demonstrate how every single purchase is contributing to helping change people’s lives.”

Alongside its seven cafés, Old Spike roasts specialty coffee at its Brixton roastery, supplies wholesale partners across the UK and delivers coffee to customers through its online subscription service.

About Old Spike

Founded by two childhood friends in 2015, Old Spike is a London specialty coffee roaster and social enterprise.

Old Spike roasts exceptional coffee while creating paths to lasting employment for people experiencing homelessness. Its Barista Training and Employment Programme provides practical training, paid café placements, and support into longer-term work.

Old Spike roasts in Brixton, operates seven cafés across London, supplies wholesale partners throughout the UK and offers specialty coffee through its online subscription service.

Website: oldspikeroastery.com
Instagram: @oldspikeroast

About Square

Square helps businesses turn transactions into connections and businesses into neighbourhood favourites.

In 2009, Square started with a simple invention — the first mobile card reader, which changed how the entire financial system thinks about small businesses. Square has since grown into a global business platform helping millions of sellers of all sizes participate and thrive in their communities.

Whether independently run or a global chain, Square understands that sellers succeed when they have the freedom to focus on the experiences that keep customers coming back. From point of sale and payments to online commerce, staff management, cash flow tools, and more, Square brings together the tools sellers need to run and grow on one intelligent platform. For more information, visit squareup.com.

About Algo

Algo is a motion & data-visualisation studio specialising in video automation. It builds creative tools that turn changing data into animated visual content at scale.

For Old Spike’s Impact Dashboard, Algo created the animated data-visualisation experience displayed on the café screens.

Website: algo.tv

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