Sunshine Sips brews new opportunities for adults with disabilities

A new coffee shop on the Coast is helping adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities get ready for the workplace.

Sunshine Sips will give participants hands-on training while helping them figure out where their strengths could take them.

Sam Jordan with the Roy Howard Community Journalism Center shows us how the program is giving life to a familiar mission.

When A Latte Friends coffee shop closed, Haylei Hayes lost more than a job. She lost a place she loved working. “It was good. It was like the happiest coffee shop in the world.”

But Hayes says what she learned there stayed with her. “They helped me become a better employee.”

Now, the nonprofit A Latte Opportunities wants to give others that same experience.

The organization’s executive director, Angele Mills, says they’re opening a new coffee shop called Sunshine Sips.

Like before, they will train adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to work in a real coffee shop setting. “It’s a lot more difficult for them to find employment. They get to learn skills, put to use the strengths that they have, learn more about themselves and just get out in the community.”

Ten interns will start the 12-week program in September. That includes Koby Weise, who worked at A Latte Friends and is ready to get back behind the counter. “It feels good, you know, helping the community, getting to know the people a little more.”

But becoming a barista isn’t necessarily the goal. The program is about helping interns learn what they’re good at — and then putting those skills to work. “We just want them to feel that confidence in themselves, that they can learn new things and do things.”

Hayes has already done that. She took the skills she learned with her to a new job.

Now, Sunshine Sips hopes to help their next group of interns do the same. The coffee shop is set to open Oct. 1 inside the Mississippi Antique Galleria in Gulfport.