They worried: Could their disabled son find a job? So they opened a KC coffee shop
Besides drinking a good amount of it, Kimberly and John Hull have no coffee background to speak of. She’s a nurse and he works in the elevator trade.
But as their son Charlie, who is nonverbal and has severe epilepsy, reached high school graduation age, they were trying to figure out what he might do for work as he transitioned out of school.
“The unemployment rate is really high for kids with intellectual disabilities after they finish high school,” Kimberly Hull said. “But they can thrive. They have the ability to work instead of just sitting at home.”
They bounced around a few ideas. One they liked was starting their own coffee shop where Charlie could work. Hull googled “How to start a business.” She availed herself of free business resources from Mid-Continent Public Library. She read a lot about coffee and reached out to local roasters to learn about beans and fair trade suppliers and all the rest.
“We didn’t want it to just be about Charlie,” Hull said. “We wanted to have a nice place that served great coffee.”
In late November, they debuted HullHouse Coffee, at 434 N.W. Legacy Drive, on the ground floor of Woodstone, a new mixed-use project in Metro North Crossing.
So far, Charlie is the only young adult with disabilities working there. He greets customers, makes cold drinks and smoothies — they call him “Ice Man” — and is working on his Clover tablet skills. But Hull said that, eventually, they’d like to have “five or so” employees like Charlie, working both in the front of house and in the back, where HullHouse roasts its beans on-site.
“Something I really like about having Charlie up front is that it creates a more patient kind of customer,” Hull said. “There’s a different feeling in here than a lot of other coffee shops. It’s not the usual hustle-and-bustle, rush-rush-rush all the time.”
Plus, she added, “We’ve already had so many customers come in and tell us their stories about family members and friends that have special needs.”
In addition to single-origin coffee, Hullhouse serves seasonal drinks (cinnamon spice latte, peppermint mocha, gingerbread latte), Hugo Tea and scones from Joelle’s Baked With Love nearby.
Hullhouse is closed Mondays but open every other day of the week from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
