Round-up purchases, or tipping jar specifically dedicated to a monthly community project.
Gamifying coffee buying, including:
- extended loyalty cards where many levels are unlocked upon incremental purchases (e.g. 3 coffee for a cookie, 6 coffee for a fruit)
- rewards can be used to gift a coffee for others
- loyalty cards can be left in the store as conversation piece and to track how many loyal customers are
Create a neighbors Spotify playlist where everyone can add their own playlist to the cafe, play their own playlist, or play others. This could be a great conversational piece for neighbors in a neighborhood with lots of musicians and artists.
"A coffee gossip", an informal social gathering for coffee and conversation of the neighborhood, where a BIG pot of coffee is served, and neighbors bring cake, food, and other goodies to share.
This could also be a great place to launch different themes for community tasting, or non-caffeinated products such as Karokaffee, Milo, Ovaltine can be shared. Also great for inter-generational discussions.
Holding informal town-hall meeting every 3 - 4 months to take a pulse of wants and needs of the community. This would work hand in hand with the neighborhood org liaison ambassador to build relationship between neighbors and neighborhood orgs. This is NOT a politically charged event and should remain as such for cultural and community development.
The creation of a rotational based role dedicated as a "Neighbor Org Liaison Ambassador". The main role is to establish relationships neighborhood organizations within Hell's Kitchen, understand their needs and how a storefront for commons can help them. At the same time, gather responses from community and neighbors and direct them to resources available in the neighborhood. This is a volunteer position, and would be best fulfilled with a neighbor.
A neighborhood club, where members are registered digitally and engage in dialogues online and offline. This is also where events, messages, notes, are exchanged, imagine using slack to let everyone know that it is your birthday and have an impromptu birthday celebration at the cafe while the barista tells everyone coming in it is your neighbor Seth's birthday... It can also facilitate informal exchanges like tool sharing, books lending, and all types of barter activities. For the digitally less savvy, Prime Produce members or barrista can help to fill in the gap by helping them to post or notify them of responses. This could also be a great way to generate inter-generational communication and bonding.
A welcoming and inviting space that is connected to the street & sidewalk with open doors, like a home outside of home, flexible for different programmings with flexible furnishing, perhaps timecards for each community member
A space that is accepting and open to all, with activities that are intergenerational
Create a gesture of sharing food, this could range from sharing a bowl of fruits at anytime of the day, share cooking with community potluck, to more elaborate supper club once a month
Open mic night once a week, including but not limited to: jazz, acoustics, poetry, performance, game nights
An indoor garden for wellness, this could combine with vegan snack options (for cafe), classes for wellness, zen garden, or short tips for "on-the-spot" wellness
Create a free little library / bookstore for the community of all ages to share, potentially a pay-it-forward "gift one, take one" scenario
Create play-areas for dogs, could be outdoors. Mix humans and dogs and maintain wellness for dogs.
For once a month, host a community art day where neighbors can make and show art, showcase latest works, paint together, and end with movie night.
- Gift coffee to neighbors as tokens, sign in coffee shop to say how many coffees are available for the taking
- Extend gifting to other ways of using the storefront space, e.g.
- 5 coffee = 1 small meeting for an hour use of the storefront
- 20 coffee - an afternoon event at the storefront