12Neighbours Community Launches Social Enterprise Coffee Shop
FREDERICTON – On July 10th, 12Neighbours will launch its second social enterprise, Neighbourly Coffee. Marcel LeBrun, 12Nieghbours’ founder and president, says the organization is excited to launch the pop-up café.
12Neighbours is a Canadian registered charity that works to give opportunity to people experiencing homelessness. Through its initial project of creating a community of affordable micro homes, it provides people with permanent housing to help them find personal development.
“Right now we have built 60 tiny homes so far, and we’re building 100 tiny homes, and we build a new house every week,” LeBrun tells Huddle.
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On July 10, 12Neighbours will be launching the next step in providing people with opportunities for personal growth. This will be a café under the name of Neighbourly Coffee.
Neighbourly Coffee will open inside of Fredericton’s Picaroons as a pop-up café. This will give individuals of the 12Neighbours community work that will help them meet and interact with local community members around Fredericton.
“We’re going to be coffee nerds and [have a] high-end product for the customer that wants a really great coffee product,” says LeBrun. “But also, it embodies what we’re about, which is opportunity.”
LeBrun says there are two people who will be leading the café and are well-known in the coffee industry of Fredericton: Mallory Kelly and Morgan Hornibrook. These individuals are the designers and coffee experts of Neighbourly Coffee and will be training other employees.
Right now, Neighbourly Coffee is partnered with Dartmouth’s Have Fun. Coffee. However, it aims to eventually transition into creating its own coffee roast for the café.
Along with this, LeBrun says 12Neighbours is working on building an area in the micro home community that will become home to the social enterprises. This will allow people to not only have employment opportunities, but also have them be much more accessible, since they will be located just beside their homes.
“We want [the 12Neighbours] community to be very open and accessible to people so this is kind of an intersection point where people can come, enjoy the café, meet some community members,” says LeBrun.
This new building and the community itself are located right beside Walmart on the South side of Fredericton, at 100 Smart Centres Way.
As of Monday, Neighbourly Coffee will be open Monday to Friday inside of Picaroons, 7:30 AM to 2:00 PM. People will be welcome to come in and enjoy the café and then grab a seat anyway inside of Picaroons. The Picaroons bar and restaurant hours will remain the same as usual.
Ryley Roach is a Huddle student intern, based in Fredericton. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected]