Change Please in Tower Hamlets

Absolutely delicious coffee - best I’ve ever tasted?! Love the concept, so glad there’s now one in Victoria round the corner from my office! Can’t wait to come back.

Lovely cuppa coffee from friendly barista :) nice to know independent charity (Change Please) coffee brand helps people learn new skills. Great location for busy commuters, workers in a hurry.

I read online that Change Please was a social enterprise; through which training was provided to homeless people to become baristas and therefore gain employment. London is a hard city to walk around if you're willing to look down. We can all be guilty of apathy, of denial, of ignoring what doesn't make us feel good. I think it's incredible that we, as the more privileged members of society, are being given an opportunity to make better, mindful decisions that will create a chain of positive impacts. The coffee was delicious. The best I've had in a long while - and cheaper than everywhere else around. If you're in the area, it's a no-brainer. Please tip if you can!

Fui al carro de Marian afuera del Guys Hospital London Bridge y honestamente puedo decir que es el mejor café que he probado en Londres. Excelente servicio amable, excelente café, gran selección de leches: regular, flaca, soja, almendra, avena (sin cargo adicional para la soja a diferencia de la mayoría de los cafés). ¡Estaré de regreso!

Café decente a un precio decente, además de que no estés recubriendo los bolsillos de las grandes corporaciones, pero participando en una buena causa grandes tipo socialmente problema. Se toman también tarjetas. Hay en todo el tiempo fuera del tubo.

This is a small van selling coffee in Reuter's Square in Canary Wharf, close to tube station. The coffee is great, you can pay using the QKR! app, and you are helping homeless people. Friendly lady serving who is there in all weathers.

Gracefully summoning jets of coffee from a dinky cart in Canary Wharf, Lucy is anything but a typical high street barista. The caffeine purveyor has a back story that would put most of the financial district's coffee brands to shame. Having learnt her craft over several months of training with The Big Issue, she took her pitch in Britain's banking heartland and is now a familiar presence, come rain, shine or flash crash. Originally from Romania, the project's first employee loves her job dispensing knockout caffeine hits in the shadow of 1 Canada Square, the now second tallest building in Britain. The tiny van parks up under the Reuters ticker by offices where millions of pounds pass electronic hands by the minute. But if anyone on the Wharf deserves a bonus, it's the former Big Issue seller in a woolly hat pitched up under the skyscrapers. Having recently tried out a refurbished Starbucks outlet in the relative warmth of Canary Wharf DLR, I decided to make it a tale of two coffees. I've traipsed past the Change Please cart hundreds of times on my way to work after emerging, blinking, from the Tube stop. It's a chilly morning when I finally stop but Lucy is whittling down a small queue of office workers with charm and ease having arrived several hours earlier around dawn. Unlike at the identikit counters inside, there are genuine smiles back from her appreciative customers. The good karma is down to a community initiative run by not-for-profit organisation Change Please and backed by The Big Issue and Old Spike Roastery. The scheme launched Piaggio vans loaded with speciality coffee in eight locations across London, with the full-time baristas paid the London living wage and given the training and skills to run their pitches. My cortada is a rich blend of espresso and warm milk complete with a pristine leaf print on the foam - served in half the time it usually takes at one of the chains indoors. After thumbing out £2.50 and a small tip, I'm hooked. The coffee grind is more than just surplus stock, with the Peckham-based roastery rotating its beans depending on the coffee-growing season, so you could be tasting a blend from Ethiopia, Guatemala or Colombia. The company professes to provide the best coffee in London and in fact my takeaway cup packs a surprising punch, with full bodied roasted tones. I head into work under the big screen and past units occupied by almost every major catering brand in the country, but it's Lucy and the small hit of white and brown that leave the afterglow.