How a Sunnyslope coffee shop helps homeless, foster and refugee teens 'cultivate the good'
When 16-year-old Kobey Ebanks first walked into the small cafe at Dunlap and Seventh avenues, he knew the chances of getting a job were slim. In the shuffle of bouncing around group homes, his Social Security card had been lost.
Everyone told him getting a job would be impossible without it, not to mention without any kind of experience or a reliable mode of transportation. But Chris and Bethany Priebe, who opened Cultivate Coffee in 2019, welcomed him with open arms.
From the outside it may look like like any other coffee shop, but to those who work there, it's so much more. The Priebes employ homeless, foster and refugee youth in the Sunnyslope community with the motto: “As long as you walk with us, we’ll keep walking with you."
Some of the kids they hire are transitioning out of foster care and have never had a job. Others are homeless and looking for employment that will enable them to get off the streets. Others are newly arrived refugees who arrive without employment history in the United States. A job at Cultivate provides resume material and job experience that will help them transition into independence in young adulthood.
"We have grown up in the West Valley, and before our married life, we've lived Sunnyslope adjacent," Chris Priebe explained. "We are familiar with the area, as we were engaging with a lot of youth through a charter school, we got to know the kids ... It's a community that's full of potential and full of brokenness at the same time."
Since opening, the Priebes have employed and mentored more than 60 young adults like Ebanks.
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Chris and Bethany described themselves as “full-blown Phoenicians,” raised in the Valley from the time they were born. The two were high school sweethearts, with a dream that started in their early days of their relationship.
“We would always dream of having a space where we could gather people and give jobs to those who had obstacles,” Bethany said. “We wanted them to cross into adulthood successfully. We had this personal belief that our role as humans is to help cultivate the good in people around us.”
As high schoolers they ran a music venue with their friends that included a coffee bar and open mic nights. They graduated high school, got married and decided they wanted to open their own space and start a business roasting and selling coffee where they could employ vulnerable youth.
They looked at old buildings from Glendale to south Phoenix while Chris continued in his ministry as a pastor and the two worked for a non-profit, Crowd to Community, which worked with youth in school settings through assemblies and workshops focused on character and leadership development.
Years passed and they didn't find the right place to build their vision to life. Then someone donated $3,000 to their youth ministry. It felt like a sign that it was time to move forward, with or without a space.
They used the money to make their first coffee roaster — a barbecue with a rotating drum. They spent $1,000 on the roaster and $2,000 on the raw coffee beans and launched Cultivate Coffee from their home.
Their first cohort was seven teenagers, aged 15 to 19, who they met through Phoenician Palms, which provides housing for many refugees, and OCJ Kids, a nonprofit that provides resources for foster children in group homes. They would bag coffee and every other week the couple would host seminars on topics like how to build a resume, interview for a job or just offer a safe space for the kids to tell their stories.
They paid the kids and kept the business going by selling the coffee to local markets, in their online store and wholesale. As the business grew, they decided it was time to expand to selling directly to customers and they began to build a coffee cart.
Months into their project, the cart was stolen along with all their raw coffee. The barbecue roaster was all that was left.
“We were devastated,” Bethany said, adding that they considered giving up the project.
But donations kept coming in, so many in fact, that after years of scouring the Valley, they were able to find and secure a permanent space on Dunlap Avenue in February of 2019.
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Running more than a coffee shop on Dunlap Avenue
"For 15 years, we were trying to do it on our own, but we couldn't do it," Bethany said, adding that it was their community that carried them through. "The way that we were able to do it tells the story that all of us have a chance to use whatever gift you have in the world. It's what started Cultivate."
Friends built and donated furniture. Chris and Bethany brought over their couch from home. An owner of a paint shop donated blue paint and painted the beaten down walls. Plumbers from the Sunnyslope community donated their own personal hours to fix the building. The owner of the building gave them the first month and a half free.
“He gave us a chance when he had no reason to,” Bethany said. “We had never rented anything in our lives like this.”
The coffee shop — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which is funded predominantly by its income, as well as some grants and money from personal donors — allowed them to offer even more opportunities to the kids they served, who could now gain experience not only bagging roasted coffee, but also working as baristas and employees at the shop.
Chris and Bethany continued to build relationships in the community, reaching out to youth through foster support agencies like Jewish Family Services, refugee programs like those at Phoenician Palms, through their church, Missio Dei Communities, The Learning Institute charter school and Sunnyslope High School.
Each cohort of seven kids lasts three months, during which time the teens work between 5 and 7 hours a week, are connected with mentors and participate in life skills and career training.
Every other Wednesday, the Priebe’s host a dinners with local community members who share life skills training, like the owner of an automotive shop, who talked about how to maintain a car and its insurance, how to earn a driver’s license, how to cultivate good customer service and how to prepare for their professional next steps.
When kids start the program, they’re also paired with a mentor. Mentors have taught kids how to drive, taken them to get their driver’s license and helped them find safe places to live. When Ebanks came to Cultivate, he met Randall.
“Cultivate has done more than give me life and job experience, it’s allowed me to meet a mentor who I now have for the rest of my life,” Ebanks said.
When the program ends, some kids will stay on staff at Cultivate, while others will find new jobs. Chris and Bethany typically are able to keep as many as half of the cohort.
Cultivate is a welcoming place in the heart of Sunnyslope
Cultivate Coffee feels like a labor love. Customers read a hand drawn menu when they walk in.
Their drink menu includes their house roasted coffee along with speciality drinks like homemade horchata latte, "Kentucky Joe," a cold brew coffee presoaked in bourbon and "Chai-nana," a frozen Chai blended with banana that was created by an intern.
An old church pew serves as a bench in the shop, and a record player plays music in the corner. Games lay under tables where oftentimes, high schoolers will play when school ends down the street at Sunnyslope High School. The local goods on display, from candles to painted cards and pot holders, were made by refugees in the community. “Free coffee” coupons hang on the walls that homeless people can cash in for a cup of coffee.
The chalk board menu, blue colored walls and map of Sunnyslope have become a familiar, safe place for 19 year old Litzy Pasos, who was invited to Cultivate by her cousin, a student at The Learning Institute Charter School.
She started working at Cultivate Coffee three years ago and now she has her own keys to the shop. She can tell you the names of the regulars who come for a cup of coffee – and they know her name, too.
When she started, she was also responsible for babysitting her sisters while her mom worked cleaning houses. The money she made went towards food for her family and the bus she took to school. She’s since moved into her own place and is working toward earning her driver's license.
"They never gave up on me,” Pasos says of Chris and Bethany. “They made every effort to make a connection with me. The people here push you to be better.”
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Offering kids a chance for a successful life
“When you are raising kids, you want them to grow up to be successful adults,” Bethany said. “There are times that you have to be stern with them and tell them, this isn’t okay. But there are days where they just need you to sit by them and let you be a mess.”
Bethany still sees and texts Ebanks, who now works a full time job at Amazon and rents his own apartment.
He believes that it was his job at Cultivate Coffee and the love he was shown there, that made it possible for him to make a home for himself and envision dreams for his life. He wants to be a chef now – and a model.
“I hope they keep doing what they’re doing, I know they’ve helped me a lot, but not just me," Ebanks said. "Another one of my friends came in with nothing but what he was wearing. They welcomed him, just like they welcomed me.”
Just a couple doors down from the coffee shop, the Priebes plan to open Cultivate Collective, a workshop space where youth and adults ages 17 to 24 can build entrepreneurial skills and work towards opening their own businesses.
“Being people from the faith that we are a part of, we feel that we are called to be blessing," Bethany said. "We are blessed to be a blessing. As we are gifted, we want to give back. That’s the rhythm of our life."
Professionals like photographers, jewelry makers or wood makers can volunteer to teach classes with the hope that the kids will hone skills themselves and start their own businesses. Bethany explained that the back of the building will be for workshops, while the front will be a retail shop selling the goods made in the collective.
"We are not going to change Sunnyslope,” Bethany said. “But we are going to change some of the lives of some of the people in Sunnyslope and then we hope that they go on to work to change the lives of people. They are a part of cultivating this community."
"Cultivate means to 'bring out the flourishing of,' and when we saw Sunnyslope this culture of drugs and violence, we wanted to be a part of cultivating the full potential of Sunnyslope and see the flourishing of that community.”
How to visit Cultivate Coffee
Details: Cultivate Coffee, 505 W. Dunlap Ave., Unit E, Phoenix. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday. 602-612-2115, cultivatecoffee.org.
Reach the reporter at sofia.krusmark@gannett.com. Follow her on Instagram @sofia.krusmark
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How Phoenix's Cultivate Coffee in Sunnyslope changes teen lives
