Community Highlights: Meet Erin Lyon of BErista, DBA Kenzie’s Be Cafe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Lyon.

Hi Erin, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today. 
2021 launched a dream to open a non-profit coffee shop that would provide meaningful employment, job, and life skills for people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Our goal: to show our community that investing in a pool of candidates that are often overlooked will benefit everyone! We currently have 14 employees and 4 volunteers with disabilities working at Kenzie’s! Kenzie’s Be Cafe is the first program offered by BErista Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit. 

When Kenzie’s opened, we expected to provide task-based workforce training; our program has become so much more than this. In less than a year, we had two of our employees successfully find employment in our community. Another two employees made the decision to pursue college! One of these BEristas almost missed the opportunity to interview with us because they were so nervous and shy. In less than a year, that same employee gained the confidence and skills they needed to pursue and earn a job outside Kenzie’s. One of our BEristas enrolled at GVSU to help other students like her pursue their dreams. It’s incredible to see how everyone’s confidence has grown and the opportunities they have been able to pursue because of the support of our community. In our first year, we provided over 10,000 hours of training and served thousands of cups of coffee. 

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We have been very lucky that the employment side has been easy. I know this is a struggle in the restaurant industry, and we have not had any issues finding and keeping employees. 

Of course, we have had some struggles. Our biggest has been our location. We are located on the East side of Grand Haven on Washington Ave. This is the same road that travels right through our downtown on the West side. We are in more of the local’s area of town and have less foot traffic. We continue to grow our base of regulars but have struggled a bit to have the majority of our town find us. 

We have had many other learning experiences throughout the year, we have found simpler ways to teach our staff, and alternative ways to teach or learn how to do processes in our cafe. We have made or found adaptive equipment that has made tasks easier. We continue to learn from our staff far more than we are teaching! 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business.
BErista Inc. is the formal name of the non-profit organization. Kenzie’s Be Cafe is our first program. Kenzie’s is a coffee shop that provides specialty coffee drinks, baked goods, and simple deli food items like quiche, burritos, yogurt parfaits, chicken salad, and soup. Kenzie’s Be Cafe is so much more than a coffee shop as our mission is to provide meaningful employment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We are a training ground for our employees. We are building those standard job skills and duties that everyone needs, with the goal that our employees will find other work in our community when they are ready. 

Our employees set us apart from any coffee shop or business in our community, but our coffee doesn’t fall far behind. We also offer a great place to meet with large tables and chairs for meetings in a very happy atmosphere. 

We are the third ‘Be’ cafe in our state. The first one opened in Ada, and it is because of them that we exist. Brody’s Be Cafe helped set the steppingstones for us. They had their coffee shop up and running with a structure we could copy. We are not a franchise but a sister business, with the hope that we will continue to see Be Cafe’s pop-up all over Michigan. 

Can you share something surprising about the cafe?
There are two things: First, we are a full-service coffee shop that offers a variety of homemade food items for breakfast and lunch and serve smoothies. We aren’t just coffee. 

Second: we have three programs now. The first is the Cafe itself. We have been open a little over a year with our anniversary falling on Halloween. The 2nd program we started is Kenzie’s On The Go. Thanks to a donation, we were able to purchase a portable espresso machine that we have been taking into our schools (12 in total) and working with the special education classes to prepare and deliver drinks to their teachers. This program serves multiple purposes. We are only limited hours, which doesn’t allow the local teachers and staff to visit us during the week. We are able to reach them this way, BUT even more importantly, we are able to start a relationship with the students who will hopefully be employees of Kenzie’s in years to come. 

Contact Info:

• Website: kenziesbecafe.org
• Instagram: @kenziesbecafe
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kenziesbecafe