A seaside café is launching a new scheme encouraging diners to buy a drink for someone less fortunate than themselves.
Breakers Café, in Garden Street, Cromer, will start the Pay with a Post-it initiative this weekend.
The pay-it-forward initiative asks those with a little extra money to buy a drink for a stranger and pin a sticky note to a board in the café. Those who cannot afford a drink can then take a note from the board and use it to buy their drink.
The café, which has introduced a traffic light entry system to maintain social distancing, is also taking the scheme one step further by offering people the opportunity to put enough money behind the till for someone they know who is struggling to have a meal.
Martin Rodwell, who co-owns the café with his wife Nikki, said he got the idea for the scheme after seeing something similar on social media.
He said: “I saw it on Facebook and I thought it’s a really good idea, I would like to think all the cafés in Cromer could adopt the same approach.”
Mr Rodwell said people did not have to put their names to the Post-its but could if they wanted to.
He said: “I think as much as businesses are struggling, we have to realise everybody is struggling and where we can offer something to people, that’s the way to do it.”
Mr Rodwell said he believed the coming winter months would be crucial for independent traders in the town and hoped the scheme would feed into the town’s sense of community.
He said the local area’s support of the town’s business through the summer had been “truly heart warming”.
“In many respects it’s make or break this winter, everybody has been lucky enough to get grants in June which helped them get through that period but the winter trade is always very slow so you have to try and get the footfall through as much as you can.
“We’re all in this together,” he said.
Breakers Café’s Pay with a Post-it scheme will launch on Sunday, October 25 and will run until February. Any money left at the end of the project will be donated to charity.
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