The Well, a downtown Mount Clemens church, is opening a coffee shop that will be part business and part spiritual mission.
Ricardo Arredondo, pastor of
The Well, expects
More Than Coffee to open Friday, March 12 at 42 Pine St.
"[The coffee shop will] let us meet the people where they are as opposed to trying to get them to come to us," says Arrendondo.
In addition to serving quality, locally roasted coffee, the shop will be a place to worship; there's an area in the back where The Well has held services for months. The shop will also provide homeless people with job training in service industry positions.
More Than Coffee takes the place of Che Cosa, a coffee shop and lunch spot that moved to Clinton Township several months ago. The new shop will feature a rotating variety of local roasts. The first will be
Great Lakes Coffee from Detroit.
Anthology Coffee in Detroit and
Dessert Oasis Coffee in Rochester will be in the initial line-up as well.
"The interesting thing about downtown Mount Clemens is there's so much diversity," says Arredondo, who spends Thursday nights on downtown streets and sidewalks reaching out to homeless locals.
"You have lawyers who have offices downtown. You have people coming in for jury duty, people coming in for court. You have people that are coming for the Oakland University center downtown. You have moms dropping their kids off at school who may want to stop in for a coffee. You have people coming in who want coffee, Wi-Fi and to work.
No matter where the customers come from, Arredondo wants them to have great coffee whether being part of greater mission or the church is important to them.
"Really, we're not trying to say, 'Hey! We're a church.' We're trying to say, 'Hey! We have this vision to just serve people coffee while we help people at the same time."
Source: Richard Arredondo, pastor, The Well, and operator of More Than Coffee
Writer: Kim North Shine
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