New Coffee Shop Serves Up Cups of Kindness

The first-floor space of the old white house at the corner of Rugby Road and Gordon Avenue was bustling earlier this month.

The scent of fresh brewed coffee welcomed visitors to Charlottesville’s new coffee shop, Kindness Café + Play. Also welcoming visitors was Charlie Scott, who works at the Rugby Road location, which opened in December. He got to work at 8 a.m. and put up the store’s signs outside.

“I deliver coffee. Smoothies. I wipe down tables,” he explained. Scott said he loves his job and the chance to meet customers, many of them University of Virginia students passing through for a drink on their way to class or settling down at a table to study.

Kindness Café + Play employee Charlie Scott serves drinks to third-year students Penelope Molitz and Nicole Cruthirds. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

This location is the second for Kindness Café + Play, whose mission is “to provide meaningful employment for adults with cognitive disabilities while creating a joyful, inclusive community space.”

Katie Kishore played soccer and basketball at UVA under her birth name, Katie Tracy, and earned her master’s degree in education in 2002.

She opened the first nonprofit café in 2020 at the Brooks Family YMCA when her life as a young mother took a turn she could have never predicted.

Birth of An Idea

After her husband, Kris, died from a rare form of cancer in 2014, Kishore was raising her young daughters when a friend sent her a video about a business in North Carolina called Bitty & Beau’s. The business, which hires people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, calls itself “a human rights movement disguised as a coffee shop.”

Kindness Café + Play founder Katie Kishore is a constant presence at the nonprofit’s location at the Brooks YMCA. It is also a home away from home for her daughters Mira, left, and Kiran. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

It was the spring of 2017. Kishore hopped in a minivan with her girls, 5-year-old Mira and 3-year-old Kiran, who has Down syndrome, to visit Bitty & Beau’s, which has been featured on NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and People magazine.

“I really enjoyed being in there and being like, ‘This is Kiran’s space,” Kishore said, thinking back to the trip. “That was powerful for me as a mom. And then the other thing I remember, (the) staff was lovely, very welcoming.”

The normalcy of it all left a lasting impression with Kishore, who slowly began planning a similar business model for Charlottesville. Listening to the employees in North Carolina talk about their commutes and seeing one come in on their day off to get a smoothie was a comforting reminder of the connection they felt to their workplace.

“I would just call it that sense of belonging and that sense of ownership that crew had over the space. It’s absolutely replicated at the YMCA,” she said. And that fellowship is now building on Rugby Road.

Charlottesville Community Embraces Kindness

The Kindness Café + Play landed at the big white house on Rugby Road, owned by Westminster Presbyterian Church, in part because of Dorothy Piatt-Esguerra, the church’s associate pastor for university and social justice mission. She’d heard about the YMCA location and reached out to see if Kishore would be interested in opening a second location at the house – which, years ago, served as the home of the Prism Coffeehouse, a community gathering place that featured performances by local musicians including Dave Matthews.

The café features comfortable furniture and spaces to study and visit with friends. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

Kishore loved the idea. She just needed more time to get the first coffee shop up and running. She asked Piatt-Esguerra if she could reach back out in a couple of years.

The associate pastor set a calendar reminder, followed up in 2022, and that set things in motion. It was the perfect marriage. “I think people at the church saw and embraced this as a way to live out Westminster’s long mission in the community. It’s long been a church that has stood up for principles of social justice, and inclusivity has been a huge part of that,” Piatt-Esguerra said.

In choosing the name for the nonprofit, Kishore said she didn’t have “anything real profound to say.”