Becoming.
Becoming a nonprofit serving free coffee at town events. Becoming a path into the workforce. Becoming a tight-knit community of members who grow together and learn from each other.
As one of the organization’s 3 B’s—along with “Being” and “Belonging”—“Becoming” is always front of mind for B3 Coffee in its mission toward inclusivity and equity.
An organization aimed at dismantling stigma around people with disabilities through social and vocational opportunities, centered on the shared experience of coffee, B3 runs pop-up coffee stands twice a month around Chapel Hill. It also creates community-building and vocational programs for its members who are young adults with and without disabilities, who work together equally as team members.
In 2018, co-founder and UNC alum Jacklyn Googins was working as a Starbucks barista and volunteering with an organization that focuses on creating one-on-one friendships between people with and without disabilities. However, she described the experience as “contrived,” influencing her to initiate B3 with co-founder Hannah Steen.
“We thought that coffee was a way to really create genuine relationships and be out and about and visible in the community, versus it kind of just being this side thing,” Googins said.
B3’s mission is to use coffee to create genuine interactions in the larger community between people who might not otherwise interact with each other, inspiring change “one cup at a time.” At their pop-ups, members chat with customers, take orders and make drinks.
“I think people are naturally uncomfortable with what they lack exposure to, and that is true for diversity,” Googins said. “So really, we’re breaking down those barriers and that stigma that often exists surrounding disability and ensuring that everyone has a space to be seen and heard and represented in a dignified way. That’s really the driver of our social impact.”
Team member Kenneth Kelty joined B3 after he heard how passionate a friend from UNC’s Post Secondary Education Alliance was about the organization. After attending a couple of online meetings, he decided to stay.
“I like them too, because it’s about empowering people with disabilities and not just using them as props, to make your business look good,” Kelty said. “It’s about the community.”
Several other team members agreed that it was the sense of fellowship over coffee and process of serving it that drew them to the organization initially.
“I do like coffee,” said team member Steffie Madden, who handed out business cards and bracelets that said, “Be An Upstander” at a town event Nov. 21.
Still, their model is multifaceted, encompassing impacts far beyond the friendship shared over their free drip coffee, pour overs, cold brews, hot chocolate and teas. Part of Googins and Steen’s vision of community inclusivity was making sure B3 wasn’t isolated in its goals, and that its team members could go on to work at other local businesses.
“That’s the vocational part. They’ll come away with an idea of who they are as an employee, and how they can best be supported as an employee, by their employers, and by their co-workers,” Googins said.
B3 is introducing two new programs beginning in 2022: “Belonging In the Workplace” and “Living Your Best Life.” Both seek to aid applicants in work and life beyond their time at B3. The organization has also begun partnering with local businesses such as Purple Bowl, Coco and Weaver Street Market to provide further career opportunities for its members, as well as businesses such as Charlotte-based roasting company Haerfest Coffee who share similar missions.
Recent East alum Jared Pascarelli joined B3 as a junior in 2019 to “make friends and meet people.” Since then, he has acquired a job at Coco, but has continued participating in B3.
The last branch of B3 deals with creating social connections on the team. Steen, who is the social relations director, organizes a Zoom meeting every week in which members meet to talk about their lives, a Sunday Social and a newsletter. Social isolation from the pandemic and the induced reduction in public events was one major impetus for the weekly meetings.
“The community programming came with COVID, but it also was building as we interacted with our team members and saw them becoming this community, this B3 community, being just peers and friends and everything in between, honestly,” Steen said.
Pascarelli goes bowling with several friends from B3 every Friday, and other members named the friends they had made as their favorite part about the organization. Since its founding three years ago, B3 has grown from 15 to nearly 40 active members, largely by word-of-mouth.
So far, along with its pop-ups and social and career programming, B3 plans to expand to a permanent location in the Chapel Hill Public Library in the summer of 2022. B3 emphasizes a replicable model and has begun similar chapters in San Diego and Elizabeth City.
“It really has been incredible to see how it started as a pop-up coffee stand to this overarching brand that serves all of us,” Steen said. “And that is driven by what our team members are needing and communicating and showing. You know, we are nothing without the ideas of our team members.”
B3’s upcoming pop-ups can be found here.
Photos by Caroline Chen/The ECHO.
