There’s a latte talk about the coffee shop officially opening up in Auburn on January 19, 2019.
Missions Coffee is being opened by Freshman Tim Rice’s parents, Jenny and Gary Rice. The purpose of the coffee shop is to donate funds to missions everywhere. It soft-opened in December, and the Grand Opening is later this week.
“My husband and I have used our savings to start the business,” said Mrs. Rice. “Our daughter Hannah was a missionary going to Africa, and a coffee shop in Kansas named ‘Coffee Connection’ used their funds from a whole day’s profits and gave them to her to help her go on her mission trip. We thought that was a wonderful idea.”
She went on to describe how the timing of the beginning of the business and the process it’s taken to reach this point.
“My husband retired last year from being a contractor, and we wanted to do something to give back,” she said. “When we talked about opening a coffee shop, we thought it would take one to two years to find a place to lease. We found the old Jimboy’s Tacos building right away, so it happened a lot faster than we thought it might. We signed the lease in June 2018 and started right away fixing up the building. It took 6 months of hard work to get the building ready and to get our permits.”
According to Mrs. Rice, the profits given to various missions will be the left-over money after basic expenses.
“The profits are the money left over after we pay all the bills, including all the shop needs: paying our employees, paying for our building lease, PG&E, phone, Wi-Fi, garbage, etc., so that means we need to sell a lot of coffee to be able to give away any,” she said.
According to Mr. Rice, the products being sold at Missions Coffee have come from local businesses, and their goods will be well-displayed during the Grand Opening.
“We will have samples of our coffee from Mast Coffee in Rocklin, and bakery items provided by Chunks of Heaven, who are located in Garden Valley,” said Mr. Rice. “We will have samples of our breakfast burritos provided by Carol’s Market, located in New Castle, and samples of our Chai provided by North Fork Chai, also located in New Castle. We are proud to be using local businesses and products.”
Tim Rice said that he is enthusiastic about the prospect of a coffee shop that will be supporting and profiting missions.
“I think it will be successful, and I think it’s really cool,” he said. “There are a lot of missions that go on in Auburn, and we are going to be supporting a lot of those.”
Freshman Jaclyn Voisine also said that she believes Missions Coffee is a good cause.
“I think it’s great,” she said. “… Funding a cause like missions with a coffee shop is really exciting compared to a regular bake sale fundraiser or something plain like that. I plan to try and go there, even though I don’t really live in the area. I still want to find the time to go when I can. I’d love to try it.”
Freshman Josh Kors said that he agreed with Voisine.
“I think it’s a great idea, I like the fact that it helps missions, so it’s not just a coffee shop,” said Kors. “… My hopes are that they stay successful, and produce what they need to fund missions.”
Missions Coffee has multiple social media pages so that the public is able to see what the coffee shop has to offer.
“I have a friend working on a website for us,” Mrs. Rice mentioned. “We hope to have it up soon. We do have an Instagram, ‘missionscoffeehouse,’ and a Facebook page.”
As a final note, Mr. Rice described their plans for the Grand Opening festivities.
“We hope to have a comfortable place for the community to come and hang out, work, play games, which we have for people to use,” he said. “We would love to invite everyone to join us for our Grand Opening, which will be on January 19th. We will have live music from 11-1:30 provided by Sticking With It, a local group of talented musicians.
