ENTREPRENEUR Sir Tom Hunter gave a £200,000 endorsement to a social enterprise.

The businessman and founder of the Hunter Foundation invested the cash in Social Bite, the pioneering sandwich shop chain which offers employment to homeless people and ­donates 100% of its profits to charity.

This funding, and new debt finance support from Social Investment Scotland, will ­finance the fourth Social Bite cafe, this time in Glasgow's Bothwell Street, with a number more in the pipeline.

Social Bite was founded by young couple Josh Littlejohn and partner Alice Thompson just over two years ago.

The couple were inspired by a visit to Bangladesh, where they met with the Nobel Peace Prize Winner Prof Muhammad Yunus and learned about his idea of a "Social Business."

Neither Littlejohn or Thompson own a single share in the business; the shares are owned by a parent charity which distributes the profits to good causes.

Sir Tom Hunter's investment comes with no personal financial return.

He said: "Josh and Alice are an ­inspiration and are at the forefront of the social enterprise movement in Scotland.

"I believe Government needs to take a long hard look at how businesses like Social Bite can be incentivised further. If you analyse the net gain to the taxpayer of taking young but ambitious people off the homelessness register and into employment surely more should be done to support them?"

Josh said: "We are really ­excited to open our fourth shop. With this infrastructure and a central kitchen we should be in a position to donate around £4000 to charity every month.

"Next stop for us is Aberdeen and Dundee."

brian.beacom@ eveningtimes.co.uk