One coffee shop over in New Jersey is equipping its
employees with real life skills. They need to succeed
a group. Some would say need this sort of
support most. They're serving up kindness and making it
a community affair. Here's Karina Gary. I love
, I love it because I like spare, spare
kind to everybody serving up kindness with every cup of
coffee served. That's what one Manasquan business is proud
to offer their customers. I just love the place
. Keep coming just for us. Kindness Cafe is
an inclusive coffee shop that employs people with intellectual and
developmental disabilities work. What's behind me? Like I
serve food and drinks like coffee, hot chocolate croissants
, muffins and bagels every Monday, Wednesday and Sunday
. The kindest cafe on main street opens its doors
from 9 to 11 at the main street kitchen.
We're providing a place where they can participate within their
communities and actually provide a service to the local,
the local people. Hi, he see you job
. Good job. You did. Great today.
Thank you. Awesome employee Chrissy Rice who created the
Kindness Cafe is an ESL teacher at Manas Juan High
school. She worked with her fellow teachers from the
Center for learning and independence to provide these jobs for
high school kids in that program. But it developed
into something much bigger when she recognized that people with
disabilities often struggle after they age out of school.
A lot of them are left with, you know
, they have the skills that they've learned, but
they can't put the skills to use because they're not
being placed in jobs. Christy says the nonprofit cafe
has become a huge community project with people donating their
time and money to make it all possible and to
grow the business. I definitely think it's so beneficial
to like work on those social skills and kind of
just really make sure everyone's really integrated in the community
and kind of working together. We got the best
coffee, the best pastries and we serve with a
dash of kindness.