A new café is coming to Sleepy Hollow, but this will not be part of a nationally prominent coffee chain. Instead, the new Sleepy Coffee, Too will be an independently owned and operated nonprofit with a double mission of pouring the finest coffee while providing employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
The driving force behind this endeavor is Kim Kaczmarek, a retired special education teacher who worked for 35 years at Sleepy Hollow High School. The new café is inspired by a food-service initiative that she coordinated while she was still a teacher that involved students making coffee and selling it from a cart within the school.
“I started a business with my students called Sleepy Coffee, and it”™s still running even though I”™ve retired,” she said. “It became a focal point in the school. But what I was noticing was that when my students graduated, there really wasn”™t anything out there for them in terms of meaningful employment. So, in my retirement, I decided to start a nonprofit, and kind of bring the original sleepy coffee into the community.”
Kaczmarek, who has no previous experience starting a B2C operation, envisioned Sleepy Hollow, Too as a coffee shop for training and employing the graduates of her former high school program who are now adults but having problems obtaining meaningful employment. She stressed that her previous experience with students proved the concept could succeed.
“I baked with the kids every day and made the coffee and I embedded into their academic program because I ran a life skills program,” he said. “The school rallied around us, and what was really wonderful was to see the transformation of people”™s perceptions of my students with special needs ”” they started to respect them and value what they did. And it kind of changed the culture of the school ”” we were very, very proud of it.”
She already has a location for Sleepy Hollow, Too planned at 110 Beekman Ave., inside what she described as “an old warehouse,” and she is working with the municipal government on getting her business approved.
“We”™re working with the architect and we have to submit all our plans to the village,” she continued. “But the village is very aware of what we”™re doing and very supportive.”
Kaczmarek is crowdfunding her launch via a GoFundMe page with a $150,000 goal ”” she recently passed the $26,000 mark ”” and through special fundraising events. Since planting the seeds for this project last August, the project has blossomed from a one-woman endeavor to an evolving endeavor with a five-member board of directors and nine future employees ready to work for her.
“While the direct service employees are going to be my former students who have a variety of special needs, I”™m going to have one or two general managers and myself, of course, who will be overseeing,” she said. “And depending on the employee, we”™re also going to have job coaches that will shadow them during their shift, in case they encounter an issue or a problem or need some help.
“We”™re going to have the employees work a three-day-a-week schedule, so it”™ll either be Monday-Wednesday- Friday or Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday,” she added, “and there”™ll be teams of maybe three or four employees that will work a three- or four-hour shift per day, and then we”™ll have multiple shifts.”
Kaczmarek is also getting input from people interested in volunteering to help her launch Sleepy Hollow, Too in either September or October, in order to take advantage with the autumnal festivities that bring visitors to Sleepy Hollow.
“The community is very excited because there”™s no real coffee shop in Sleepy Hollow,” she said. “It makes us a coffee shop with a cause.”
