Last month, the Wrigley neighborhood ushered out memories of Fox Coffee House and opened its arms to Wrigley Coffee—a social enterprise coffee shop that provides employment opportunities for people experiencing homelessness.
The coffee shop is run by Family Promise of the South Bay, a nonprofit that assists families experiencing homelessness with case management services, transitional housing and transitional employment with the goal of securing permanent housing and employment for those they assist.
The idea for Wrigley Coffee came to fruition when Executive Director Andrew Nishimoto was perusing the Wrigley neighborhood. The nonprofit had just secured the lease for a home in the neighborhood—courtesy of the City Church of Long Beach—to use as transitional housing.
Nishimoto, who previously worked for a nonprofit that runs a social enterprise landscaping company, saw the shuttered facade of Fox Coffee House and started to wonder if workforce development could be the “missing piece” in their nonprofit’s services.
“After some evaluation […] we identified that having a trauma-informed employment space for our families, to develop some of the skills needed to thrive in the workforce—was necessary,” Nishimoto said.
The creation of the shop was a community effort. Rose Park Roasters helped the nonprofit with the build-out process and donated equipment to get them started. The Merchant donated cups and plates. Solid Coffee Roasters, which have three locations across the Los Angeles area, will provide beans and flexibility while Wrigley Coffee fine-tunes its supply chain needs.
In addition to traditional staffing, up to three people experiencing homelessness will be trained at the shop on a rolling basis. The training program will last a flexible 90 days.
“The hope is to eventually move them into a space where they can continue to grow and learn their skills,” Nishimoto said, noting that local coffee shops like Rose Park Roasters have already expressed interest in hiring their participants. “Our hope is that they will then move into management roles.”
From there, he said, he hopes participants will be able to pivot their leadership skills to other industries and secure long-term, stable employment.
“We found that one thing that is needed to maintain housing is employment income, right?,” Community Program Manager Paula Patino said. “A lot of times, what we found is that clients needed that additional support through employment services.”
Nishimoto said that one of the main goals of Wrigley Coffee is to provide a trauma-informed workplace. Staff are trained in trauma-informed care, like how to identify trauma or triggers and how to respond to trauma in the workspace.
“The duplication effect of what we want to see happen at Wrigley Coffee isn’t necessarily a bunch of social enterprise coffee shops that hire individuals that are facing housing insecurity,” he said. “But instead, workplaces across the board that are trauma-informed, because if you’re homeless, if you’ve [experienced trauma], that does come up in the workplace.”
Their second goal is to provide good coffee and a safe community environment for residents in Long Beach.
“More and more, we’re made aware that there are less and less safe places for some marginalized communities,” Nishimoto said. “So we want to be that for them.”
The coffee shop offers a meeting room that’s free to rent for students, nonprofits and community groups. For business groups, the room is available for a “minimal fee,” Nishimoto said.
Wrigley Coffee will also display a rotating art show and hopes to hold performances at the space, such as spoken word, music and comedy events.
And despite having a secondary mission, Nishimoto said Wrigley Coffee’s focus will remain true to its primary purpose: being a neighborhood coffee shop.
“We know there will be a lot of people that will come here the first time because it’s a nonprofit, because they love our mission, but you’re not going to spend $5 on a drink every day for a bad coffee, even if you love the mission,” he said, noting that the nonprofit hired a coffee program manager who “comes from coffee, loves coffee, and is passionate about coffee.”
And though the shop just opened last month, Nishimoto is optimistic about its future.
“There was all like a big hoopla during the grand opening, you know, the city people were here and it was packed,” he said. “But what has been more exciting than that are the repeat customers, the ones that live locally that walked here from their homes that have come every day since we’ve been open.”
“And the other Wrigley residents that have said, you know, ‘We were just waiting for another place to reopen after Fox closed because we just wanted a local coffee shop in Wrigley.’”
Wrigley Coffee is located at 437 W Willow St and is open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
