What We Teach…and Why

What do we teach at Coffee Cup and Sidewalk Hospitality? 

Easy answers are “Entrepreneurship,” “Hospitality,” “Business.” 

Yet in reality, our aims are far more subtle and significant. 

We teach that life is a series of acquired skills – and that mastery is achievable, exciting, and fun.

Much of school, by necessity, is a head down, pencil up struggle to learn facts. In Coffee Cup, our heads are up, and we teach students to look adults in the eye, requesting and receiving information, processing it accurately and efficiently, and completing tasks in a team with others. Of course, we discuss concepts like “types of businesses,” “expenses” and “net profit.” But then we translate those concepts into actions.

After each Thursday morning cafe closes, students are able to how many cups of coffee, tea and hot chocolate we’ve “sold” (remember, all of our beverages are given to school staff for free), how much we’ve received from sales to the public, and how much we brought in through donations.

Yet even those numbers are important only in context. 

Before any sale is made, students have learned how to take an order and fulfill it. And this is no small feat.

Think about it: We ask 4th graders to walk through their school, find adult staff members, ask them if they would like a beverage, and take an accurate order from them (which includes writing the adult’s name, room number, and how much sugar, cream, etc. they’d like on an order form). Then, this student must return to the cafe area and wait patiently while the order is filled by other classmates, who use the information that’s been collected to make the beverage correctly. Once the order is completed, the student must retrace their path back to that same adult, and deliver the order with a smile and a thank you. 

This happens 60 - 90 times within an hour on Thursday mornings!

Older 5th and 6th grade students, who have gradually gained confidence and skills, fill tea and hot chocolate orders with many specific requests – one adult would like green tea with honey, another has chosen English Breakfast tea with sugar, while another wants hot chocolate sometimes require whipped cream. 

There’s so much to keep track of.

Coffees can be regular or dark. It can come with or without milk. Students field a myriad of requests, which boosts their critical thinking capabilities. 

And, of course, they love the thrill of using the cash register and fulfilling multi-faceted requests.

It’s a lot of work! And yet we keep offering this experience year after year. 

Why?

There is an enormous joy witnessing how acquiring skills makes a person stand straighter, look teammates and customers directly in the eye, speak up more and more, and walk with a determined and confident step. 

It’s not a competition, there are no grades. 

There is only personal growth, as each student can achieve it. There is a chance to try new things, in a “real world” context. We really do have a successful business!

When this school-based group is then invited to participate in Sidewalk Hospitality on Saturdays at CHH, we invite them to acquire a wider variety of skills. 

Whenever we host Sidewalk Hospitality, all set-up is accomplished by the student volunteers. The popcorn is popped by students. The lemonade is mixed by students. The snowcones are blended by students. Everything is set up, managed, and cleaned up by our eager and dedicated student volunteers.

Of course, there is plenty of adult supervision. But honestly, after about three Sidewalk Hospitality sessions, most of the students know the work and are able to do it themselves without much instruction.

But Sidewalk Hospitality isn’t just about the task of making snacks and serving drinks.

At the sidewalk, we show the students how important it is to be truly welcoming, to engage children and adults in conversation, to be kind and work nicely with others. We teach them how to create a neighborhood – and a world – where neighbors know neighbors, where activities like creating art and throwing ring toss becomes ways to connect across difference by opening paths of communication. 

They don’t “know” that is what they are learning, but they know that they feel different, that they enjoy coming back to volunteer over and over again, and that they have made friends. Then, with their actions, they teach that to the adults. 

That is our true “why”. It’s what keeps us coming back Thursday after Thursday, and Saturday after Saturday.

There’s just nothing like giving people skills to navigate the world, to break down the icy barriers of shyness, and to heal some of the parts of our world that need healing.