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Cemal Ezel

Founder, Change Please
Cemal Ezel

In 2015 Cemal set up Change Please, a coffee company that trains formerly homeless people as baristas whilst also providing wraparound support with housing, finances and therapy. At first the baristas sold coffee from mobile Piaggio coffee trucks but they can now be found at concessions inside corporate companies and various WeWorks. In 2021, Change Please acquired AMT coffee, so will soon be visible at 55 more locations including train stations and airports.

Along the way Cemal convinced Richard Branson that Change Please was a good idea and became the supplier of coffee on Virgin trains and planes. Around the same time, Sainsbury’s also started stocking the coffee brand. Change Please is now one of the UK’s most successful and recognised social enterprise brands. 

“My biggest focus personally is to try and show a way we can do business for good, that there’s a way to still have a triple bottom line, but also support people at the same time. For me, to represent what is possible in business is the most exciting part,” said Cemal.

Cemal’s journey with Change Please can prove very motivational and inspiring to audiences. He is passionate about the power of business to make the world a better place through supply chains, and is very interested in starting discussions about organisations thinking disruptively and entrepreneurially. Lastly, he is of course extremely knowledgeable on homelessness and the solutions to it.

Watch Cemal explain how he tackles homelessness with business here:

Cemal Conduit

 

Book Cemal for an event
Cemal Ezel

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