Pay it forward - ANU Food Co-op offers suspended coffee and lunch in Canberra

It's a brilliantly simple good deed for the day. You come into the ANU Food Co-op to grab your morning coffee, and then you ask for a suspended coffee to go alongside it. You pay for both coffees - and the barista makes your usual flat white for you to takeaway.

What happens to the second coffee? Someone else who's doing it tough can come in later and ask if there are any "suspended" coffees available. They'll get the coffee you paid for, free of charge. Or, if you've bought a "suspended lunch", they can have a free hot meal to get them through the winter day.

For the past two months, the ANU Food Co-op's customers have paid for free coffee and lunches for people in need - those who might be homeless, who've lost their job or simply can't afford a hot drink or food. You can buy a suspended coffee for $3.50 and a lunch for a very reasonable $5. The coffees and lunches are tracked on a chalkboard, with volunteers and staff notching up each item paid for and scratching them off as they're redeemed.

The co-op's suspended coffee program was started by barista and volunteer David Curtis, who read about the idea in a magazine and thought it was a great way to help out the homeless and dispossessed. "I always thought it was a brilliant idea, but I really had no way of making it happen in any of my past workplaces," he says. "The food co-op is great for that. It lets you express yourself freely ... there's none of that oppressive hierarchical structure that squashes creativity and drive out of front line staff, members and staff all have the same voice. I basically got up one day and thought I'd give it a go and there it is."

Curtis says the program's been very steady. "The coffees seem to be bought every second day and redeemed on the day or the day after. I've had a lady buy one coffee only to have it instantly redeemed by a needy man, it was nice to see and to know that she could see her kindness affecting someone in her presence."

The lunches seem to be taking a little longer to be redeemed, he says, perhaps because people haven't realised they can ask for food. Who's using the system? Curtis says it varies. "I've redeemed lunches and coffees to artists, the mentally confused, ex public servants decimated by job cuts, people in job limbo and university students doing it tough," he says. "I've had friends come in who haven't eaten properly for days and have found a hot meal waiting for them."

Curtis says the co-op is designed to be a safe space where people shouldn't have to feel uncomfortable about the fact that they can't afford food. "The food co-op buzzes at lunch time with students, public servants, the unemployed and socially active. You'll never know if the person next to you is eating a suspended lunch, but that's the point. It's a place where the mud on your boots or the ink on your fingers count for nothing, and where the true you shines through in the conversations you share with fellow Canberrans," he says.

If you have a couple of spare dollars, head down to the co-op and grab a coffee - or two.