Not-for-profit café opens at Covent Garden

Social enterprise and not-for-profit operator Fair Shot Café has opened in a 2,224 sq ft unit at The Yards, Covent Garden.

The deal was managed by Longmartin Properties, a joint venture between real estate investment trust Shaftesbury and the Mercer’s Company, a 700-year old livery company which focuses on philanthropic causes.

Opening at 3 Slingsby Place, Fair Shot Café aims to tackle unemployment amongst adults with learning disabilities by enrolling 12 young adults per year into its hospitality training programme. Once this is completed, Fair Shot aims to put its graduates into various jobs across London.

Fair Shot’s Covent Garden site spans across two floors, with the Bohemian-influenced café on the ground floor while the organisation’s main office and sensory blackout room for employees sit upstairs.

It joins a number of food & beverage offerings at The Yards including Bombay café Dishoom, Burmese restaurant Lahpet, Italian pasta brand Miscusi, independent bakery Buns From Home, and pan-Asian concept Gura Gura.

On behalf of Longmartin Properties, Abi Labbett, senior director at CBRE, said: “The opening of Fair Shot Café marks another exciting addition to The Yards’ myriad of distinctive F&B concepts and strengthens the destination’s positioning as a go-to for visitors, residents, and office workers, come day or night.”