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Coffee Shop Renovations Update 02

After more than 5 years of planning, fundraising, and dreaming of opening the HAS HEART Coffee Shop, the trees in Veterans Memorial Park are blooming, interior walls have come down, support beams have been hoisted, and HVAC and water systems are being installed.

For the past 10+ years, we’ve only had 1-month pop-up shops and exhibits to share our mission, showcase the HERO[series] projects and VOICES projects, and generate revenue to fund the next year’s project. We’ve relied on a small team of volunteers and have kept our liabilities and expenses to a minimum.

More than 12 years after our founders, Michael and Tyler, met over a cup of coffee, we’re now just a few months away from serving our own coffee (via Madcap Coffee Co.) within a historic building on the grounds of Veterans Memorial Park in downtown Grand Rapids, MI.

This week, we were fortunate to welcome FOX 17 and WOODTV8 into the building for a special news update to share with the Grand Rapids viewing area. Watch the coverage and click to read the articles below for a further preview.

The plan is to open up the small interior space to feature the coffee bar in the center with a few bar stools, a handful of chairs and tables for veterans and civilians to connect with one another, veterans’ stories featured on the walls, a rotating selection of specialty HAS HEART products and more.

We’re also building a walk-up order window with outdoor seating to enable customers to order while outside enjoying the meaningful Veterans Memorial Park and the oak trees shading the city’s oldest park.

Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without the help of several partners, organizations, foundations, and individual contributors, including:

For more updates, be sure to follow HAS HEART on Instagram and Facebook, sign-up for our newsletter, and bookmark the Coffee Shop page for more info over the coming months.