Inside the Good Company cafe

Source: Toast Ale

Toast Ale, the brewery that uses surplus bread to make beer, has teamed up with fellow social enterprise Change Please to open a café and taproom in London.

Called Good Company, the site serves up a selection of bakery items from other social enterprises and B Corps alongside a range of hot drinks and Toast Ale’s beverages.

Breakfasts and cakes come from Breadwinners, a social enterprise helping refugees, while lunch and dinner service will include a selection of sandwiches, salads, and hot pies by Pieminster. There will also be food collaborations for the Taproom late evenings on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The drinks menu will include the full range of Toast beers, as well as carefully selected guest beers and other alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks from B Corps and social enterprises.

Good Company is located at 17-19 Triton Street in the heart of British Land’s Regent’s Place campus. It is open from 8am to 8pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, and 8am until 10pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Good Company aims to be more than just a place to drink coffee and beer – it will also host regular events, including talks and film screenings, with customers invited to help shape the schedule.

The space will also host barista training with Change Please, a social enterprise which is working to end homelessness, for members of the homeless community, helping increase the number of lives the coffee company can change.

As part of its commitment to zero waste, Good Company is reusing furniture and equipment left behind by the previous cafe that closed due to the Covid lockdowns. It is also sourcing second hand furniture from various sources such as the CIC Orange Box.

Another pillar of its sustainability strategy is teaming up with other mission-led businesses such as Too Good To Go, which enables the sale of discounted surplus food to customers through its app, and Biobean which collects spent coffee grounds and turns them into coffee logs for heating.

“We’re excited to be opening Good Company, where Toast’s Bread Quarters will be based,” said Toast Ale COO Louisa Ziane. “We’ll have all our beers on tap plus guest beers by other social impact breweries and a really exciting range of other drink options. We’ll also be hosting events to bring sustainability and social responsibility to life, making the space a hub for progressive businesses.”