Coffee With a Cause: How One Café Puts Mental Health Support on the Menu
At a Logan Square coffee shop, every purchase goes toward suicide-prevention education. Staff are trained in mental health first aid, and a wall of resources invites customers to start conversations that can save lives.
By Parker Bailey3 min read
Jonny Boucher sees coffee as a way to wake people up on more than one level.
He opened Sip of Hope Coffee Bar in Chicago's Logan Square in May, and opening day attracted a sizable crowd — among them Illinois State Senator Dick Durbin. Why so much attention for a café in a neighborhood already full of them? Because Sip of Hope is built around a mission unlike any other: dismantling the stigma attached to mental health and taking active steps toward suicide prevention.
Sip of Hope Coffee Bar founder Jonny Boucher (right) with manager Brian Kmiecik.
Boucher has lost relatives and an employer to suicide. Many people confronted with that kind of tragedy are unsure what to do; Boucher chose to act. He founded Hope for the Day in 2011, a charity focused on suicide education and prevention. That organization eventually gave rise to both the Sip of Hope coffee blend and the brick-and-mortar café in Logan Square.
The thinking behind coffee
Boucher points to the people we encounter routinely: baristas, bartenders and barbers. "It's my theory about baristas, bartenders, and barbers. We see these people every day, sometimes more than our own friends," he says. "Talking about mental health can be as easy as getting a cup of coffee."
In 2013, Boucher approached Dark Matter Coffee in Chicago and its founder Jesse Diaz. The two worked together to develop the Sip of Hope blend, sold under the Dark Matter brand. Hope for the Day then got the blend onto shelves at Whole Foods while concentrating on outreach work.
Sip of Hope Coffee Bar partners with Dark Matter Coffee.
Securing a space
With his barista-bartender-barber idea in mind, Boucher began drafting a business plan for a physical location in 2016. By October 2017 the charity had kicked off a funding campaign, which had raised more than $150,000 as of May.
Getting Sip of Hope off the ground meant enduring a frustrating hunt for a location before Boucher finally landed the right one. The Dill Pickle, Logan Square's grocery co-op, was relocating to a larger space, vacating a spot directly across the street from the neighborhood library.
Donuts and pastries!
Taking over the former home of a community-funded co-op felt fitting to Boucher. The Fullerton Avenue address, somewhat removed from the beaten path, also gave the café some distance from the neighborhood's main drag — where coffee businesses are thriving. "Logan Square is known for coffee, but almost all of that is on Milwaukee Avenue," he says.
Resources for mental health
The location lets Sip of Hope establish its own identity with some breathing room among the area's other coffee shops, while also opening the door to broader outreach. Inside the café, customers find a wall of educational mental health resources; across the street at the library, Sip of Hope runs free mental health training. People can stop in for coffee and make use of what's available on site. And if they want to talk with someone, every café employee is trained in Mental Health First Aid, a program that equips people with tools to recognize the struggles associated with mental illness.
Sip of Hope's menu includes its signature blend, a rotating Dark Matter blend, and Dark Matter's Chocolate City iced coffee blend on tap. The Sip of Hope blend remains available at Whole Foods, online, and at other Dark Matter cafés. "Everyone's life has been affected by mental health," Boucher says. "For $5 you can get a great cup of coffee and contribute to a cause that is near and dear."
More info >> sipofhope.com
