Community Collaboration

The idea of creating a Turkish Coffee cafe is not just about selling a new product to a consumer, it’s about people and creating a welcoming space for people to gather and connect. With that comes the opportunity to do more,  create an avenue  for people to give to others who need it. If I was going to create my own line of Turkish coffee, I wanted it to do more than taste good..I wanted it to also provide opportunities for others.

Coffee is universal. It connects people and provides space for understanding, compassion, and creates a new sense of family.

I firmly believe that coffee can bridge the gap between differences, religion, and race. If we can come together for a bit of time and have a conversation, then we can realize that people from the other side of the world, or even the next town over, are not so different than we are.

Reaching out to the local International Rescue Commmittee chapter here in Salt Lake City I completely brain dumped my idea on them. The IRC helps the local refugee community get a fresh start once they land here in Utah. They also have an incubator kitchen, The Spice Kitchen, which helps immigrants create sustainable food businesses.

Over the past few weeks as we have zoomed and talked about this coffee collaboration, a sort of sparkly excitement can be felt as the ideas come together.

The potential of how many people we can help with this coffee could be really substantial when we get this all going.

Our plan of action is this: For each bag of wholesale or retail coffee, 15% of the sales will go back to the IRC in SLC to be divided between the IRC and the Spice Kitchen.

The goal is to get it to market before the holidays, get it into Middle Eastern markets, Cafes and Restaurants after the New Year, and potentially expand nationwide with other IRC chapters from there.

You can read more about the program here. I am working on creating an online store to get that up and running by the end of the month, so stay tuned…exciting things are in the works!