UK’s first vending machine for the homeless installed in Nottingham shopping centre

The 29-year-old, who is starting a job at Goldman Sachs in February, alighted on the idea after speaking to homeless people while waiting for trains during his daily commute from Nottingham.

He said: “It struck me how many would tell me that during the evenings and nights there were no services open for them.

“In Nottingham we have two centres that are open about four hours a day. It struck me that there must be a better way to get necessities to these men and women.”

Mr Khaled started out by writing letters to around 70 vending machine companies in the UK, Europe and US asking if they would be willing to donate a machine to the project. After many rejections N&W Global agreed to give them one of their most advanced models worth £10,000.

Another breakthrough came when the shopping centre group, Intu, agreed to house the vending machine in its Broadmarsh shopping centre, where it will be accessible 24 hours a day.

Mr Khaled said as the project progressed it became clear that access to the vending machine needed to be tied to support services to ensure it helped break the cycle of homelessness rather than perpetuate it.

The cards for the machine are given out by a local charity, the Friary, who carry out an assessment of need. The recipients are then required to attend the charity’s drop-in centre once a week or the card is deactivated.

He said: “The more I talked with local homeless services the more I realised the use of the card had to be linked to local services as we didn’t want to be seen as encouraging any type of rough sleeping.

“If you want to get benefits in this country you need an address and organisations like the Friary let them use their address, help them find work and get a home.

“People attend (charities such as the Friary) but it can be weeks apart or months, few attend on a weekly basis, which we hope the cards will help.”

The vending machine’s stock is donated by local companies and charities. The food largely comes from the charity FareShare, which redistributes surplus produce heading to landfill from supermarkets.

Other partners have came on board, including Google, which is using its AI 'Brain' project to help analyse data from the cards to build up a picture of how the vending machine is being used and then inform what it stocks in the future.

The machine currently vends water and food such as energy bars and fruit alongside snacks like crisps and sausage rolls. It also provides sanitary products like tampons as well as warm clothing and foil blankets. 

The machine is currently replenished by volunteers, but the charity has recently struck a deal with Uber Eats to help keep it stocked.

Since the vending machine launched earlier this week the charity has been inundated with offers from other companies across the globe keen to help expand the scheme, including Amazon and US giant Tyson Foods.

It has also begun fielding enquiries about setting up similar schemes in countries such as France, Greece, China and Australia.

Mr Khaled described the reaction to the initiative as “humbling”, but is now having to search for a new CEO to take over the charity before he starts as an associate of Goldman’s Technology, Media and Telecoms investment banking arm.

In the coming months Action Hunger is planning to roll out the machines to Manchester and then Kings Cross, London.

Meanwhile, as Mr Khaled contemplates the rapid expansion of the scheme, he said the ultimate aim was to ensure the service the charity is providing eventually became obsolete.

He added: “Longer term what we want to see and what we really want to know is whether giving someone a card over a period of time gets them off the streets.”