A Melbourne soup shop now has six months' worth of pre-paid meals for its homeless customers, after a social media post went viral earlier this year.

In a bustling city laneway, homeless man David sits down to a hot soup on a cold and wet Melbourne day.

Despite working in soup kitchens to feed the needy for several years, he says he found himself on the street again recently after a number of life challenges were thrown his way.

"I was one of the people that went around and used to cook for everyone for nothing," he says.

"And now I'm the recipient on the other side of it again."

David is a regular customer at The Soup Place, a Melbourne shop where customers can choose to buy a bowl of soup to feed the homeless, at a reduced price.

Customers at The Soup Place have the option to pay an extra $3.50 to feed a homeless person. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin )

People pay $7.50 for a full-priced bowl, and can choose to pay an extra $3.50 to buy one for someone less fortunate.

From 'keep warm' and 'stay strong' to 'you are important'; they often leave a heart-warming message which is served with the soup.

"I have read a few of them … They're trying to warm people up," he says.

"[It's] humbling.

"When I need a feed on a Sunday when all the other places and resources aren't open, they're there."

The power of paying it forward

The store's co-owner George Paraskevopoulos says the idea came after he saw a place in New York that gave customers the chance to buy homeless people a slice of pizza.

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Within 12 months of launching the initiative here in March 2015, the shop served more than 6,000 meals to people sleeping rough.

The Centre Place store experienced a huge boost after a post on the Humans In Melbourne Facebook page went viral earlier this year.

Today its walls are almost completely covered with prepaid post-it notes.

Mr Paraskevopoulos says they have enough tickets to feed their regular homeless customers for six months.

He is now planning to partner with homeless support organisations, to make the pay-it-forward tickets redeemable for special events.

"We're really just a platform, the generosity comes from the public," he says.

"The whole concept of paying it forward is so powerful that every day it teaches me something different.



"It's like a tree … It goes backwards, sideways, front. It just goes in so many directions.

"It's good for the soul."

Mr Paraskevopoulos says some people have questioned how they will stop people taking advantage of the system.

But he says they aren't going to ask people to prove that they are in need.

"We didn't want do any screening," he says.

"It's a trust system.

"They get to eat like we do, when they're hungry, from 7 in the morning until 7 in the evening."

"I think it's great. A really good thing what they've done," Big Issue seller, James, says he is thankful for pay-it-forward soup and sandwich scheme. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin )

That is something homeless man Paul says has saved him and his partner.

"It means we can get fed twice a day," he says.

"Because we don't have anywhere to live, it makes life very difficult … We get paid and we spend it on accommodation straight away. Then four days later we're back to square one.

"This shop here is awesome. The amount of people that have paid it forward as you can see, every tag on that board, a lot of people have paid it forward.

"The only problem is, if the business went broke it'd stuff us all up."