New Avenue Foundation’s story with DiFabio’s and Frank Agovino began in February 2017. I had been looking for a place in which to start a coffee roasting business and sent a Facebook message to DiFabio’s Facebook page asking if they had ever considered adding coffee roasting to their business. You never know unless you ask and I am never afraid to ask. I was pleasantly surprised that the answer was “yes, let’s talk”. I met with Frank and after speaking with him and learning his story, our story together began. This was the opportunity New Avenue Foundation had been looking for in order to start a business in which to employ people with disabilities.

Frank was creating a “not your average coffee shop“, the Media Bean Company. It became a collaboration of DiFabio’s founder Frank Agovino and Jim Wurster, Co-founder of New Avenue Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit public charity whose mission is to help create more meaningful lives for people with disabilities. One key part of our mission is to help find gainful employment and provide training for adults with disabilities.

“When Jim approached us about the idea I felt in my heart right away that it was something I was going to be involved with,” Agovino said. What is the idea exactly?

The concept was straightforward and works. The Media Bean Company offers fresh roasted, fair trade coffee from South America, Africa and other countries around the world which creates an amazing coffee product. The coffee beans will be roasted by adults with disabilities. New Avenue Foundation’s coffee will not only be available by the cup in the new location but will be packaged for retail sale in the shop as well as farmers markets and craft fairs throughout the region. A portion of all proceeds of coffee sales at Media Bean Company will go back to New Avenue Foundation.

The adults who will be employed in coffee roasting, will be trained how to roast and package the coffee and they will always be supervised. Disabled people are truly a gift and take pride in what they do. This will be an awesome product because the employees will care 100%.

However, as stories go, ours has a twist. But first, let’s start with our story.

New Avenue Foundation’s story began in 2013 when a 501(c)(3) public charity was formed by two fathers. Our mission is to help create more meaningful lives for people with disabilities through innovative social, employment and housing programs. A couple of years ago we started to work on finding jobs for people with disabilities. Our Community Cup Coffee, a social enterprise in micro coffee roasting, is an extension of Our Community Cup Coffeehouse, a successful PAY WHAT YOU CAN social and music venue now in its 3rd year. It was started primarily for families and caregivers of people with disabilities, but welcomes everyone. Our Community Cup Coffee is helping to provide jobs for people with different abilities. Did you know that between 75 and 85% of people with disabilities are either unemployed or under-employed.

Finding competitive employment in businesses like financial organizations, software companies and large businesses is very difficult and only supplies limited job opportunities for a certain portion of people with disabilities. This is a start but what about those who have limited skills and can still be a valuable part of a community. We know our kids can make a difference if only given the chance.

Another part of our story happened when we met Dave Baldwin of Furnace Hills Coffee in the summer of 2016. We immediately saw the benefit of what he had started in his business employing people with disabilities to roast coffee. We started selling Furnace Hills Coffee at local farmers’ markets and craft fairs during the summer. This was the start of our marketing analysis to pursue the feasibility of starting a roasting business in Delaware County. Customer response was very promising with nothing but kudos for the quality and flavor of the coffee.

I started looking for a way in which to open such a business. Location was critical. Since we only needed about 200 square feet of space for the equipment, we started looking for an existing place in which to rent a small space from them. Zoning and health department requirements had to be addressed in our search for a place. There were lots of places that were available. However, monthly rental costs were not what our business plan would allow. And zoning was a problem.

As we continued our search, we kept selling our coffee and finding ways to improve sales.  Then two things happened back to back that would allow us to open a place. The first one looked really promising and I was proceeding with negotiations when another opportunity suddenly appeared. This was when we met Frank Agovino.

Since we thought our business would soon start ( I was a little naïve), we signed an agreement with Furnace Hills Coffee in February 2017 to become a franchise. I contributed $20,000 from my 401k to help start the business. We purchased 2 roasters for $7,000. We were really excited to be able to start. We were on our way.

We looked for a propane supplier and set up a contract. Then we had to meet the PA Department of Agriculture requirements. We started looking for contractors who would bring the place up to code. Time went by and the estimates came in, totaling $20,000. That was something I hadn’t considered. But with my contribution, I thought we were in good shape. In the fall 2017 we had our contractors lined up. But we had to wait for the winter thaw in early 2018.

When the time came in March 2018 to sign the contractor agreements and give them deposits, we found we were out of money. The monies had been spent on the Furnace Hills Coffee agreement for the past year, as well as on the purchase of equipment. We then realized that our existing sales were not enough to make the business sustainable and meet our mission of employing people with disabilities. What to do?

The folks at DiFabio’s were still onboard to rent us their garage space for coffee roasting but we needed to raise funds. We decided to target April 2019 as our date and began to raise funds.

As stories go, there is another twist. DiFabio’s space is now being used by other parts of the restaurant. Frank is still onboard to make this coffee roasting business a go but we are now looking for another place in which to do it.

Starting a food-related business (lessons learned and beyond – much more to come)

Several years ago, I got the brilliant idea to start a business in which to employ people with disabilities. Easy, peasy, right? Well now 2-3 years later, we still are looking to start a business. And we will be starting one in January-February 2019. This will be a coffee shop/café in Havertown PA as part of the new Kelly Center for Music, Arts and Community being created by a nonprofit Kelly Music For Life.

It has taken a long time, but the stars aligned several months ago and we had connected with the right people. For the entire story, please read here (not yet finished).

Being friends with the Kellys and their organization for over 8 years helped. They knew me from all the music events in and around Havertown that they ran. They knew me because I set up and managed all of their websites. So, when they started talking about creating this community center, I became involved especially because it was going to have a coffee shop. And I knew that our organization could manage it and help create employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Our part would enhance the value that the center would have, being a place for all.

So, we made a proposal to Kelly and they liked it. We set up a financial agreement and are now working on completing our part of the deal. They are completely funding the entire center, including the coffee shop. We do not need any capital for equipment and such. We are only responsible for staffing and procuring the things we will make and sell at the coffee shop. This is huge because lack of capital stopped the other businesses we wanted to start.

So, we are getting ready setting up the vendors we will work with for coffee, tea, cakes, and drinks (iced tea, lemonade, juice, etc.). We need consumables like cups, plates, napkins, utensils, lids, sleeves, sugar, creamer, etc. We need employees and volunteers to help us 7 days a week from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. That will be a lot of employees since we envision our kids will only work about 2-3 hours a shift. We will need 3 managers to work the morning, lunch and afternoon shifts.

We will need insurance and workman’s compensation.

We will need operating manuals and human resources manuals. We will need to train our staff.

Starting a food-related business has many more requirements, and pitfalls, than other businesses. This has caused us not be able to start a business when we wanted to. There are code requirements from the county and township and state and federal governments. We need to have a certified food manager on site at all times, passing the ServSafe certification. Both Andrea and Jim are now certified. But any people we hire as managers will have to become certified.

We will also be engaging occupational therapists to help us assess our employees and identify needs and accommodations. Or just identify that a specific job is not for them. We will do this during a testing and training phase as we bring in every person who applies. We hope that giving folks a day or two working in the coffee shop will give us and them the time to evaluate whether the job is right for them. We will also be doing assessments at times throughout their employment. We want to try to keep on top of this to make sure it is working for everyone involved. We don’t want to fail because we didn’t do this.