For Change Cafe

Home.one is a hole-in-the-wall, non-profit social enterprise cafe that serves coffee, porridge, bircher muesli, and 5 & Dime bagels. Visit the spot near Anstey Station and you'll find people sitting on milk crates and timber benches, cradling bowls of porridge handed down from a metre-high window plugged into the facade of an apartment building. With the exception of the occasional train rumble, it’s quiet: like a friend’s inner-city backyard.

The food is simple, but the concept is complex. All breakfast profits are donated to Eat Up Australia, an organisation of volunteers who make thousands of lunches each month and deliver them to schools around Victoria. Coffee and bagel profits are donated to programs dedicated to eliminating youth homelessness, including Launch Housing, a Melbourne-based community organisation that supports the homeless. The enterprise also provides traineeships and employment to youths from Launch Housing.

Home.one is a collaboration between three people and three non-profit social enterprises – Dan Poole of the Crêpes for Change food truck and The Coffee Cart Changing Lives, and Ben Manassah and Kirsten Pannekoek of Three Bears (launched in 2017) – a porridge and muesli brand that’s been available primarily at farmers’ markets until now.

In their first bricks-and-mortar store, designed with the help of Roland Postma, the trio’s shared ethos of sustainability and reducing food miles is front-and-centre. Every ingredient is sourced as locally as possible and the menu is plant-based, with six rotating flavours of hot porridge and cold overnight oats, and six bagel fillings.

Previous menu favourites have included Turkish delight bircher, with a rose and strawberry compote, pistachios, toasted coconut, apple and Greek yoghurt; and a haloumi, beetroot hummus and dukkah-filled bagel. Coffee comes from Wood & Co, a roaster based in Brunswick.

Home.one also has a keep cup borrowing system with the help of Torquay’s Joco. For a $10 deposit you can get a reusable Joco cup, to take home and bring back the next day.