Rachel Sammons . December 3, 2018
“I THINK WE’RE SUPPOSED TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS.”
Story time! Grab a cup of house blend and gather around the fire. Because, kids, I’m about to tell you how Palate Coffee Brewery all began.
Many years ago, in a land far, far away—called Palm Beach, Florida—Palate co-owner Tina Kadolph was speaking at Palm Beach Atlantic University when she was coerced to visit a nearby coffee bar called Common Grounds.
It was Mark Kaprive’s fault. Mark was the university’s director of campus ministries and the missions instructor of intercultural studies. (You know how those directors of campus ministries and missions instructors of intercultural studies are.)
Mark persuaded Tina to visit Common Grounds. Tina was too nervous about her speech to even think about coffee, but she went along reluctantly.
She shuffled into Common Grounds, flanked by Mark, her daughter, Katrina, and her friend, Teresa. What happened next…well, you’ll just have to believe us.
“As soon as I walked in the door, I felt like God was saying we should do something like this coffeeshop. But use it to fight human trafficking,” Tina says.
Tina didn’t say anything about this feeling. She stayed silent as Teresa nipped to the bathroom. Then Katrina looked at her mom and—I kid you not—said:
“Mom, I think we’re supposed to do something like this.”
But wait. There’s more.
Moments later, Teresa popped out of the bathroom, saw mother and daughter in conversation, and said:
“I don’t know what you’re talking about but, I just want to say, I think we’re supposed to do something like this.”
Tina was baffled. Later, after speaking at the university, she told her husband, Carl, that she wanted to show him a coffee shop. Sure enough, as soon as he walked through the door, Carl had the same feeling.
“Like goosebumps,” he says. “I mean, we just knew. We would say that it was God telling us.”
They met the owners of Common Grounds and then went back to Sanford to start their own coffee shop. No doubt, there were obstacles. After all, they had no plan and no funding.
This is where the pallets come in.
Carl had sixty pallets set aside to make furniture out of. So how did they end up furnishing Palate Coffee Brewery?
That’s right. Walk into Palate and see: it’s entirely made up of pallets. The tables, the countertops—basically everything but the back wall (that’s an old fence). Everything else is out of pallet wood.
Since that day of stepping into Common Grounds, Carl and Tina never saw the owners again. Until a few weeks ago.
Mike and Kelly Olive learned about how their coffeeshop played a part in launching Palate Coffee Brewery and visited to see what it was all about.
“It was super cool to have coffee with them and talk about what we’re doing and future things we will be doing,” Tina says.
What those future things are exactly? Well, you’ll just have to stay tuned.
For now, the team at Palate Coffee Brewery is thankful for Common Grounds. Coffeeshops like yours are pure inspirations. We know from experience.
Learn more about Love Missions and what you can do to help fight human trafficking here.
Tagged: PalateCoffeeBrewery, Palate, coffeenearby,coffeeshop, coffeenearme, CommonGrounds, PalmBeach, Florida,humantrafficking, coffee, cafe
