Colorado teahouse trains, employs people with special needs

Five-year-old Avery Bland may not be able to express herself in a typical way, but when the youngster rolls into her new namesake teahouse in Loveland, it’s clear that she’s pretty darn happy.

Avery is nonverbal, blind and wheelchair-bound. “She smiles the entire time, and she squeals while she’s there,” said mom Kristen Bland, who opened Avery’s Modern Teahouse, which employs people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD), in February. “When I walk in, it’s like, ‘This is what it’s all about. This is about community.’”

Bland isn’t exactly a food-and-drink industry vet — the teahouse is the designer’s first foray into the restaurant business, albeit as a nonprofit — but after hearing from fellow parents in the special-needs community that their kids wanted jobs but weren’t finding businesses that would give them a chance, she made it her mission to create a spot that could train and employ them.

One of those workers is 20-year-old Ben Diaz, who recently earned his first paycheck at Avery’s. (And he has saved every penny of it.) Diaz, who was born with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) and hydrocephalus, works the POS system, stocks the teas, and delivers food and drinks to customers. He loves working with the people who come in to the cheery shop, especially kids, and he’s excited to work his first baby shower, held in one of Avery’s private event rooms, soon.

His mom, Michelle Diaz, said he’s excelling in his new role. “This has been a dream of ours that we weren’t sure would come to fruition. When I picked him up (from Avery’s), he said, ‘I feel independent, mom, and I feel super proud of me.’ That was it, that’s all I needed to hear. He loves to give back, and this is another way for him to give back to his community. We see more of a future for him now, and we’re excited to see where this opportunity takes him.”

Avery’s IDD workers are part of the government-funded School to Work Alliance Program (SWAP). Bland said that SWAP pays for those initial hours while the students (what they call SWAP participants) learn new skills and get real-life job experience. The goal is for these workers to find lasting careers.

Many businesses continue to be reluctant to hire special-needs workers, which is a shame, Bland said, as they’re deserving of more opportunities. “The special-needs community, we have so many people who want jobs. That’s been one of the biggest challenges, when you have so many people who want jobs and deserve jobs, and we still have to turn them down because we don’t have enough jobs to fulfill the need.”

Englewood’s Brewabiltiy and Aurora’s Howdy Homemade Ice Cream operate with similar missions, to provide work and training for members of the IDD community. They are both for-profit businesses, and while no one expects to get rich, they’d like to prove that the model is financially viable. Hopefully, Bland said, more companies will look to IDD workers to solve their own hiring needs.

Diaz and the teahouse’s six other IDD employees are paired with workers with more traditional experience. The menu and set-up are designed to be doable for all the workers, so the food is grab-and-go, the teahouse is cashless, and the prep for the coffees and teas is fairly straightforward. But that doesn’t mean that the menu isn’t great tasting. Bland hand-picked all 13 teas, being sure to include a mix of teas for both avid tea drinkers and people wanting to try something fun.

While Diaz hasn’t gotten the chance to try the menu yet himself — he’s very strict about not eating and drinking on the job — he said that the iced sunset peach tea has been super popular, and they can’t keep the breakfast burritos from Fort Collins-based Momma Perez in stock.