Everett’s newest coffee shop sells espresso drinks, pastries and sandwiches, but its menu doesn’t tell the whole story. CafeWorks, which opened Tuesday, will soon offer job training to homeless and at-risk young people served by Cocoon House.
CafeWorks, in the HopeWorks Station building on Broadway, is the latest social enterprise business launched by HopeWorks. That organization, created in 2011 as an affiliate of Housing Hope, provides work experience and other help to homeless and low-income people.
Since 1991, Cocoon House has sheltered Snohomish County teens and provided outreach to prevent homelessness. At the coffee shop Tuesday, Cocoon House CEO Cassie Franklin said the new partnership provides one more answer for young people being served by her organization: “How can we get our kids into employment?” she said.
The new cafe, with Eric Huenefeld as manager, joins three other HopeWorks Social Enterprises ventures, including landscape and irrigation businesses and the ReNewWorks Home &Decor Store. CafeWorks customers can enter from the store or through a door on the building’s south side.
As the business gets its start, hired baristas have joined Huenefeld behind the counter. In January, Franklin said, two young people from Cocoon House will become paid CafeWorks interns. Candidates will go through a job interview process.
“It’s going to build their self-esteem,” said Julio Cortes, Cocoon House public relations manager. Even teens who don’t get internships may gain confidence to apply for other jobs, he said.
Those chosen will learn job skills as basic as showing up on time, along with customer service and the fine points of making espresso drinks. “It’s the new first-time job,” Franklin said.
Huenefeld, who has a human services degree and a Starbucks background, said two new interns will join the staff every six weeks, with up to six working at a time. Bre Beckman, an 18-year-old barista working at the cafe Tuesday, will help train Cocoon House interns.
There may be opportunities both for kids served by Cocoon House and those helped by Housing Hope’s teen parent program.
It’s fitting that the first customer through the CafeWorks door, at 7 a.m. Tuesday, was Robert Malone. He is board of trustees president for the Employees Community Fund of Boeing Puget Sound. “I had a quadruple nonfat latte,” Malone said.
CafeWorks was made possible by a major grant, $500,000 in all, from the Employees Community Fund. It came in two payments, $420,970 in 2014 to remodel the HopeWorks Station building, and $79,030 earlier this year for the cafe.
“Last year we changed our funding guidelines to try to have more impact with our grants. Larger grants have more impact,” Malone said. He said nonprofits were chosen for their focus on attacking poverty, “not just on treating symptoms.”
Malone said the Employees Community Fund also awarded a $500,000 grant to FareStart, the Seattle nonprofit that provides culinary job training to homeless people.
Ed Petersen, chief strategic officer for Housing Hope and HopeWorks, said the Catalyst Kitchens program that grew out of FareStart is helping start CafeWorks.
The new cafe also is being helped by Starbucks. CafeWorks sells Starbucks coffee, the company did some training for CafeWorks, and a coffee brewer is on loan from Starbucks. An espresso machine and two coffee grinders were donated by La Marzocco USA in Seattle.
“This is a starting place,” Petersen said. His vision includes a new five-story building to go up just north of HopeWorks Station. Building plans include three floors of housing for employees of businesses — including a restaurant — on the lower levels. “Piece by piece, we’re building it,” Petersen said.
For the cafe workers, too, Petersen sees making and serving coffee as just a start.
“It’s a step, not an end point,” he said. “It’s a ladder.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
About CafeWorks
CafeWorks is open 7 a.m.-2 p.m. weekdays in the HopeWorks Station building, 3331 Broadway, Everett.
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