Name:

Steven Jacobs.

Age:

49.

What is your business called?

Greenhouse Community Cafes.

Where is it based?

Glasgow.

What does it produce, what services does it offer?

We provide a catering and hospitality service to public sector organisations and private businesses through on-site cafes. Behind the scenes, we offer employment and employability training to workers from marginalised groups. Rather than seeing a cafe as simply a place to provide customers with coffee or lunch, our model makes it a space for social interaction, training and employability for people with additional needs, mental health issues, long term unemployment. Our cafes also operate a schools’ outreach programme, offering training to non-attenders and school refusers, and they act as a community space for local people to meet. We started with one outlet and we’re now up to five in East Renfrewshire and South Lanarkshire, with plans to launch more in every local authority area in Scotland.

To whom does it sell?

Local customers and staff who work in the buildings where they’re located. They’re also venues for clubs and community groups. We work with local authorities, health and social care and education departments to help them meet employability and positive destination targets. As a former teacher I’ve developed, along with my wife, Mandy, a series of training courses, accredited by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). Recruits are given an initial eight-week assessment by our permanent staff of professionally-qualified trainers, before progressing to one of several SCQF Level 2 courses that impart skills in visual observation, customer service, food preparation, and independent travel. We also offer recruits and pupils barista skills for which we have developed the first SQA-accredited course. More than 70% of the 54 trainees who have passed through our programmes to date are now in paid employment.

What is its turnover?

Fast approaching £1 million.

How many employees?

30.

When was it formed?

August 2016.

Why did you take the plunge?

Mandy and I had been in cafes in leisure centres and other public buildings and we were never particularly impressed with the standard of food or service on offer. Many are run by large companies and they can feel impersonal. It occurred to us that these cafes could provide a great opportunity for local authorities and private companies to meet their corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations. We thought that, used in the right way, they could provide a lot more for their landlords than just a monthly rent. As well as improving the quality of food and service, we also believed we could do something around the issue of employability and community for some of the most marginalised members of society.

What were you doing before you took the plunge?

I was working in education, as a teacher of personal and social development, and Mandy was working in business as a manufacturer of baby blankets. A new health centre was about to open near our home in Clarkston and, on a whim, I decided to tender for it. Between us we had a range of transferable skills that we knew would be relevant and useful in delivering multiple services. We also knew that no-one else would be offering the same business model, so we were quietly confident of landing the contract.

How did you raise the start-up funding?

We invested £5,000 of savings and kept to a very tight budget in the early months. All the assets we needed were in place, provided by the local authority, so all we had to pay for was start-up stock and salaries for two full-time staff. Our suppliers were paid 30 days in arrears, so we did a lot of juggling. As we progressed, we invested every spare penny back into the business to help us grow and we tendered for other outlets as they came up.

What was your biggest break?

Achieving SQA status was an enormous hurdle and very important to our success because we knew that’s what would differentiate us from other operators. We had ambitions to meet educational and training goals, but we needed to demonstrate we could do it to the standard required by East Renfrewshire Council. It was like climbing Everest without ever having scaled even a Munro and very tiring. For months we researched and devised training and learning schedules for lots of different roles, every evening after a long, hard day running the business. It involved a lot of liaison with the SQA to ensure we were following the right path to meet their criteria. Every new café we open, can automatically gain SQA approved status which gives us a huge advantage over our competitors.

What do you most enjoy about running the business?

After a lifetime of working in the public sector, where everything is managed by hierarchy and procedure, I love being able to make quick decisions and to get things done without having to go through multiple layers of bureaucracy and having everything signed-off in triplicate. I can understand why public sector organisations operate the way they do – when you are using public money to run things you need a degree of accountability - but the procedures in place for everything right down to ordering a packet of paper clips place a dead hand on the way things operate and on the potential to grow.

What do you least enjoy?

The amount of detail that’s involved in running a business that slows down the progress we are desperate to make. I’m unashamedly a big-picture person. I can visualise the growth trajectory of this business and I’m impatient for it to happen.

What are your ambitions for the firm?

We want Greenhouse Community Cafes to have a presence in every local authority in Scotland as well as being the ‘social’ choice for private sector catering services, adding value to every organisation with whom we work.

What are your five top priorities?

• To have at least one Greenhouse Community Café in every local authority area in Scotland

• To become the first-choice catering provider for most local authorities in Scotland.

• To open Greenhouse Community Cafes in hospitals and other NHS buildings.

• To provide SQA qualifications for up to 1000 people from marginalised communities every year.

• To have our outreach programmes in barista skills and other training offered in every local authority area in Scotland.

What could the Westminster and/or Scottish governments do that would help?

The Scottish Government could adopt a similar, social value-added approach to ours throughout the entire public sector procurement process. So much public money is spent on private sector service providers, yet all the contracts seem to go to a small number of very big contractors. It feels like the people who make decisions about public sector tender contracts are not paid to be imaginative or ambitious. The problem with that approach is that nothing ever changes or improves.

How do you relax?

Sampling and creating adventurous cuisines, reading, swimming.