King’s Perk has thrown its support behind Love Your Sister, adding a delicious new item to its menu to back the campaign.

The new ‘Connie spesh,’ an $11 combo consisting of a classic Vegemite and cheese toasty and a Milo, has officially hit the Seymour coffee van’s shelves.

The menu item honours Love Your Sister co-founder Connie Johnson, who passed away from breast cancer in 2017, and is made up of some of her favourite eats.

Aside from being a tasty new treat, the ‘Connie spesh’ will see funds raised for the cancer vanquishing charity, with 20 per cent of its profits to go straight to Love Your Sister.

To celebrate the combo’s launch, Aussie actor, Love Your Sister co-founder and Connie’s brother Sam Johnson popped by the van on Tallarook St with his team.

Since 2012, Sam and the Love Your Sister team have raised $20 million for medical research, but Sam said the beginning of the charity’s journey wasn’t as seamless as one might expect.

“Make no mistake, I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t have the drive to do this. I told my sister as much: I wanted her to fight cancer privately,” he said.

“She had two little kids and a husband and I didn’t think that she’d thought through the perils of public life.

“After a year of wrangling, she finally convinced me that this was bigger than us, and the drive ever since has been the pain that I’ve seen in what people have shared with me.

“I turn that pain into fuel and that pain, in a strange-sounding way, motivates me to continue my work and gives me the drive that I require.”

Love Your Sister has a big mission: to vanquish all cancer.

To do this, it hopes to get Australia to deliver precision medicine to all new cancer patients, assessing what the right treatment option is from the jump.

It’s with the support of small businesses and larger companies that the charity is able to get closer to achieving this vision.

Sam said it was wonderful to see King’s Perk be part of the initiative.

“It’s great that they’ve jumped on board, they need to be lightly chastised for being far too kind,” Sam said.

“King’s Perk didn’t just do a one-off donation, they fundraise on the regular for us and that’s as high end as there is ... it’s like the holy grail from a fundraising perspective.

“If people give regularly, that’s the highest commitment they can offer, so that’s why I owe them forever.”

The team’s latest venture is Sam’s 1000, a campaign which seeks to get 1000 businesses on board to help provide precision medicine to Australians.

“It makes my heart full — nearly 600 businesses are part of Sam’s 1000, and not one of them is less important than the other,” Sam said.

“The thing that moves me is that we kick cancer in the kiwis, together.

“Sam’s 1000 businesses have always been and will always be part of something much bigger.”

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Friday, 30th June 2023

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