Today we’d like to introduce you to Terri Ramsey.
Hi Terri, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
A Special Blend began as a dream inside of one of our founding members, Deedee Ungetheim’s head following a visit to her daughter at UNC -Wilmington. They stopped into Bitty and Beau’s coffee shop one afternoon, not knowing that a dream would be born that day and turn into the happiest place in Greensboro. The shop they visited was a shop very similar to our coffee shop, and Deedee came back to Greensboro inspired. She enlisted several additional friends, and after about 18 months of grassroots fundraising and sharing their vision over desserts in friends’, homes, wine and cheese gatherings, and visits to Sunday school classes and garden clubs, A Special Blend opened its doors. On opening day there was a line circling through the store for eight hours straight. Deedee and the rest of us who were there at the beginning were reaffirmed in our strong belief that Greensboro needed a coffee shop like this to call its own- a place whose mission is to provide meaningful employment to individuals with disabilities in a community setting..
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The support from the community has been wonderful, however, we continue to rely on donations to support our work and provide opportunity for our employees. Covid was a rough time, but we remained open and committed to our crew and our community. and Our board accessed all available resources from the government to keep people employed. We have had very little turnover with our employees because they seem to never want to leave. We opened a second store in High Point about 2 1/2 years ago. Sustaining two stores financially has been a challenge, as that means twice as many employees. ASB has a different mission and business plan than other coffee shops. We operate with more employees working during each shift, as we are not trying to maximize efficiency, we are trying to maximize opportunity for the community of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, which is unemployed/underemployed- with conservative estimates close to 80%.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am the volunteer coordinator and one of the board members for A Special Blend. At our coffee shop, we pride ourselves in an excellent product and an excellent customer service. This begins at the door where each customer is greeted. And welcomed into the shop upon ordering, each customer is given a “customer card”. This word is an affirmation that is called out when each customer’s order is ready. Some of our popular customer cards are:
“ beautiful customer, amazing customer, and important customer”.
I have often heard people speak about this to each other and overheard one customer last week say that she went home and told her family that she was “amazing”. That’s what we love to hear! A place to pick us all up and carry that joy throughout the day.
What’s next?
We hope to be around a very long time and continue to expand our stores to hopefully serve lunch items and maybe even in the future have a coffee truck, but no big changes.
Several sister stores across NC- most of which were inspired by ASB- have had to close . We want to continue to spread our mission and gain more supporters financially so that we will provide more opportunity and make even greater impacts across our community for a long time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://paa.ge/aspecialblend
- Instagram: aspecialblendcoffee
- Facebook: A Special Blend
