The Well, a coffee shop with a special mission, opened its doors this summer in Green Hills. This trendy new spot for students to lounge and study has a slight twist. It’s a non-profit organization geared toward ending poverty.
The Well is tucked away on Richard Jones Road in Green Hills, just across from Trader Joe’s. The coffee house donates its proceeds to help create sustainable solutions for people without water and food across the world. Adjunct Bible Professor Rob Touchstone and five other men comprise the board of directors that essentially runs the booming new business.
“It’s a way of addressing poverty in the world,” Touchstone said. “This is our effort to give back.
“Our goal here is to be a non-profit missional coffee house where we’re giving away all of our profits to try and alleviate poverty by bringing sustainability to different parts of the world, mainly in Africa.”
While it’s only been open for a little over a month, The Well has already completed one project to give back. Touchstone said the coffee shop’s proceeds bought a new washing machine for an infirmary–essentially a nursing home–in Jamaica.
Touchstone said he was enrolled in Earl Lavender’s missions graduate course about five years ago when he was asked the question, “What would the church look like outside the walls of the church building?”
He challenged his group of friends to tackle this question head on.
Touchstone said his goals for The Well were to “take down the religious barriers that sometimes get put up by church buildings, stained glass and formal religion and to try and get in to the community more fully and engage people right where they are.”
“I’m very moved by the statistics I see that show how many people are dying because they don’t have clean water or food, or how many people live on $1 or $2 a day,” he said. “More than half of the world lives on $2 a day.”
The Well has partnered with the local non-profit Blood Water Mission and the Living Water Project out of Otter Creek Church. Together they’re working to help fund the building of wells for clean water systems around the world.
Inside the coffee house, a wall of merchandise displays a vast array of scarves, bags, purses, bracelets and other small items that are made by the impoverished people on the streets of Honduras, India, Ethiopia and Uganda. The proceeds of those products cycle directly back to the makers of the products.
According to Touchstone, merchandise accounted for half of the coffee shop’s overall sales during its first month of business.
Touchstone said there are many ways to give back when you enter The Well. Whether it’s buying a scarf from Uganda or sipping on a hot cup of coffee, you’re giving money from your hand to the hand of a person in need of clean water and food, he said.
The basics of The Well:
The coffee house was set up to help people feel comfortable when they come in. It’s a laid-back environment. You’ll see students doing homework on one of the handmade wooden tables by the windows or see someone reading a book on one of the benches made out of burlap coffee sacks. Almost everything decorating the coffee house is recycled from an old barn.
The center of the coffee house boasts a common sitting area with couches and benches for close conversation just in front of the barista. The coffee house is somewhat quiet aside from the noise of the coffee grinder and the muffled sounds of light chatter, so the staff is working on putting in a sound system to provide a little music for patrons throughout the day. Live music is also on the to do list at The Well, according to Touchstone. Right now the staff is working on setting up an in-house concert with local songwriter and musician Dave Barnes.
The Well is open from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays.