North KC cafe trains baristas of all abilities
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Photos: Abbey Higginbotham/Axios
A new North Kansas City coffee shop wants to change how employers see adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Why it matters: Latte Life is taking on a national problem: Working-age Americans with a disability who were looking for work last year faced an unemployment rate more than double everyone else's.
State of play: That rate remains high despite decades of laws meant to lower it, and Latte Life has that history on its walls.
- Framed posters walk through decades of disability rights laws, from a 1975 law guaranteeing kids with disabilities a free public education to a 2014 workforce law pushing for fair pay alongside coworkers without disabilities.
How it works: Latte Life opened Monday in the former Post Coffee space on Armour Road. It's run by Life Unlimited, a North KC nonprofit serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).
- Workers learn skills including running the register and stocking inventory, general manager Fiona Kennedy told KSHB.
- Then they take those skills "out into their communities," Life Unlimited chief operating officer Amy Taylor said.
Zoom in: On its second day, around 30 people from The Farmer's House, a separate Northland disability nonprofit, came in for coffee.
- "We want to support inclusive workplaces, and plus it's a good cup of coffee," executive director Amy Allison tells Axios.
What they're saying: Allison tells Axios that people with IDD rarely come up in workplace diversity conversations: "We're not bottom of the barrel. We're like 6 feet under."
- She added that the customers watching Latte Life's workers could include employers who "didn't ever think about employing somebody with autism or Down syndrome until they saw them in action."
💭 Abbey's thought bubble: I ordered an iced pumpkin spice latte and a sausage and bell pepper quiche, and both were delicious. Then I split a giant caramel brownie with The Farmer's House crew.
- Best coffee run I've had in a while.
The bottom line: Life Unlimited hopes Latte Life shows the metro why hiring people with disabilities matters.