Brewing coffee and self-growth
The downtown location of Astute Coffee. This shop is located at 1818 Dodge St, Omaha, NE.
Astute Coffee, in downtown Omaha, is a nonprofit coffee shop dedicated to providing employment along with self-growth development opportunities to young adults who have been impacted by foster care.
Astute offers many resources to its employees for self-growth including financial literacy classes, cooking and nutrition classes, mindfulness meditation and academic tutoring. They also can assist employees with obtaining a driver’s license and or birth certificate. All of these resources are important and useful, but these are not what Sommer believes makes a true difference.
“What I think is the most important benefit is an authentic relationship with a caring adult. There are so many of us … that greatly lacked those while growing up.”
Miah Sommer started the program in 2014 and has been involved in the business since. He is now the executive director.
Sommer has become involved in giving back to the community’s youth because he experienced a similar upbringing.
“I grew up the same in the same
manner they did … I experienced food shortages, depression, I was kicked
out of school and eventually dropped out and didn’t get my GED until I was
in my late 20s,” Sommer said.
Through Sommer, Astute coffee’s mission is to cater to the individual. They know that everyone is on their own path, so each person may need different things.
“So many mentoring programs are set up with the idea that if the mentee would just be more like the mentor, make better decisions, and pull up their bootstraps, then they will be successful,” Sommer said. “This is myopic and untenable. I started this program with the hopes that the people I work with don’t make the decisions I made – essentially so they don’t end up like me.”
Astute is a fairly small organization, which works in their favor. When working with a group of people who have gone through different traumatic experiences, it is important to take time to understand the depth of the individual. Sommer does not believe in a simple, fix-all solution.
Sommer said, “We can tailor programming to the individual who is in front of us rather than having programming that is rigid…Success looks different from person to person.”
As mentioned, Astute is a nonprofit organization, meaning that it was not organized to make a profit. This allows Astute to focus on more than the money.
Sommer said, “We need the ability to put the needs of the people over the profits of the shop … As a nonprofit, we can have tax-deductible philanthropic support as a way to carry out our mission.”
Astute has two locations, but the main location is downtown. This was chosen to have an accessible location for employees.
“I wanted to make sure that we weren’t viewed as serving just one neighborhood or one demographic … Also, Omaha is not known for being a super friendly alternative transportation town. So we wanted to make sure that for those who don’t have a car, which is a good portion of those we work with, we were at least close to the bus lines,” said Sommer.
Astute Coffee is making a difference in the lives of many struggling youth, one cup of coffee at a time. Through Astute Coffee’s program, Sommer watches the employees turn into healing adults.
“With each year that passes, I am more and more grateful to be able to do the work I do,” said Sommer.
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