B3 Coffee flips the system for those with disabilities

B3 Coffee is more than a coffee shop. Beyond the lattes and espressos, it offers members of the disability community social support, life skills and workforce readiness along with visibility and dignity.

When a nonspeaking intern wanted to take orders, for example, B3 Coffee flipped the system to allow customers to fill out a card with their drink preferences.

“We experimented with workarounds,” said Jacklyn Boheler, co-founder and executive director of B3 Coffee. With the cards, “we could eliminate the need for spoken communication and still facilitate meaningful exchanges.”

Boheler, who earned a master’s degree in occupational therapy, co-founded B3 Coffee in 2020 with fellow Carolina graduate students Greg Boheler (now her spouse) and Hannah Steen. The name of the coffee shop stands for “Being, Belonging and Becoming.”

As an undergraduate, Boheler worked at the on-campus Starbucks and saw how coffee brought people together. With B3 Coffee, she wanted to build a similar sense of community among people with and without disabilities.

B3 now operates a kiosk at the Chapel Hill Public Library and a pop-up coffee service at the Innovate Carolina Junction, a co-working space and innovation community in downtown Chapel Hill. It provides pop-up coffee service and catering for special events at co-working spaces, schools, churches, conferences or other organizations across the Triangle region.

B3 offers programs and classes on workplace readiness, life skills and technology as well as internships and employment opportunities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit also began to build an online network to keep participants connected. Now up to 300 members participate weekly in person at social meet-ups and virtually in community-building Zoom calls.

B3’s programming helps young adults with disabilities navigate the often dramatic drop in services they experience after graduating from high school, Boheler said. The internship, which provides work and life skills and the opportunity for service and occupational shadowing hours, involves working one kiosk shift per week, participating in allyship and self-advocacy trainings, and taking B3’s Belonging in the Workplace class.

“It’s all interactive. We role-play situations that happen at the kiosk and problem solve them together so that there is an educational component,” Boheler said.

While the kiosk gives employees important work experience, it also plays a larger role in the community, Boheler said, by helping to eliminate misconceptions around disabilities and the discomfort that employers have with the idea of differences.

“Employers tend to be pretty resistant to the idea of hiring someone with a disability, especially if they don’t know a disabled person,” she said. “B3 increases the visibility of the disability community, which is important for breaking down stigma. We provide spaces for disabled people to be represented in a dignified way.”

People without disabilities are often the ones who benefit most from B3’s programs, including college students completing field work in social work, occupational therapy, human development and other programs. “They are looking for an immersive experience in disability culture and for personal relationships with people with disabilities,” Boheler said.

B3 takes a nonhierarchical approach, having a person with a disability and an ally working together in equal but distinct roles. “We focus on how to support people to be their authentic selves and thrive in community,” Boheler said, instead of focusing on how to fix or change people with disabilities.

“Many of our allies experience a major paradigm shift when they participate in B3,” Boheler said. “It’s mind-boggling when they realize they don’t have to see this person in terms of deficits and that they can learn something from them.”

Read more about B3 Coffee.