Library coffee shop has been vacant for 4 years. But plans to relaunch it are percolating.
%20(1_fitted.jpeg "LegacyWork’s youth employees have been serving coffee at the Advanced Learning Library’s cafe space on Saturdays since the first of the year. They recently added Thursday hours, too.")
When Wichita’s Advanced Learning Library opened at 711 W. Second St. in the summer of 2018, it had a surprising amenity— a tiny coffee shop.
Even more surprising, librarians said it was just fine for patrons to drink their coffee anywhere in the new building.
Reverie Coffee Roasters ran the coffee shop space, which sits just inside the main entrance, until 2020, when Reverie owner Andrew Gough closed the shop, citing a lack of traffic amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
For more than four years, the cafe sat vacant as library directors tried to decide what to do with it.
Now, though, it’s back in service and opening a couple of days a week. The cafe is being operated by a unique Wichita nonprofit program called LegacyWorks, a youth employment program that hires teens ages 14 to 19 then helps them with things like job skills, financial literacy and personal development.
But that’s not all the teens learn: They’re also trained extensively in one of three “social enterprises” — GardenWorks, PotteryWorks and CoffeeWorks. The employees chosen for the CoffeeWorks program, the newest of the three, learn coffee brewing, cafe maintenance, barista skills, drink design, flavor pairing and coffee roasting.
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Legacy Works, a part of Legacy Ministries, officially launched in 2022 and is based in a big house at 945 S. Wichita. For the past three summers, the students in the program have been putting their skills to use at the Old Town Farm & Art Market. This summer, they ran a stand where the CoffeeWorks employees sold coffee, the PotteryWorks employees sold their pottery and the GardenWorks group sold homemade applesauce.
Jaime Nix, who was hired as Wichita’s director of libraries in late 2021, said that she’s been thinking for a while about ways she could get the cafe space running again. But instead of having it operated by an independent business venture, she wanted to reimagine it as a space that “had more purpose.”
She met up with Shelly Westfall, the executive director of Legacy Ministries, and with representatives from the Workforce Alliance of South Central Kansas, which also has a youth employment program. Together, they brewed up a new plan.
Every Saturday since the beginning of the year, teen employees from LegacyWorks have been running a pop-up coffee shop out of the library cafe space.
They’ve been opening from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and serving drip coffee, lattes, pour-overs, cookies, grilled cheese sandwiches and soups.
Organizers wanted to see how the public would respond to the pop-up cafe before they publicized it much, Westfall said. But so far, it’s been a hit with patrons — so much so that the group recently added Thursday hours, opening from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
If traffic keeps up, Westfall said, they may be able to be open three days a week by the end of March.
“The cafe lets them really put those barista skills to work,” Westfall said. “...To see it activated in a way that’s really doing something for young people is exciting.”
The organizers are hoping that they can form a long-term partnership so that the cafe is open 63 hours a week along with the library.
But that’s going to take time — and money, they said.
LegacyWorks is paying around 10 employees from its program to work at the library cafe, but they’ll have to find more money to be able to keep it open full time.
The Workforce Alliance, whose employees are usually ages 16 to 24, will play a part, too. LegacyWorks might not have enough labor for full-time hours at the library, especially since its employees are mostly still in school. The hope is that the alliance’s employees can fill in the gaps.
Other details also will have to be addressed. To run full-time, the cafe would need a paid manager and cafe equipment. For now, the LegacyWorks students are hauling all of their expensive and heavy equipment — the espresso machine, the grinder, the drip cart — back and forth from their home base to the cafe.
“We’re all trying to make it work within our current resources,” Nix said. “But looking forward, we’re going to need more investment.”
LegacyWorks employs a maximum of 25 young people at a time, Westfall said. Its employees work shorter hours during the school year, longer ones during the summer.
The group will begin another round of recruiting in March, and teens will soon be able to fill out applications at www.legacyworksict.org/youthapp
They can apply for any of the three programs: GardenWorks employees help raise produce at an on-site garden, and PotteryWorks employees create and sell ceramic products.
LegacyWorks regularly recruits students from nearby West High School and also often gets youth who are aging out of the foster care system. The program also works with Youth Horizons and the Wichita Children’s Home to find employees.
But anyone ages 14 to 18 can apply. Everyone who applies gets an interview, Westfall said.
The group is a 501(c)(3) that pays its employees using grant funding and dollars from various foundations and corporate sponsors.
“We are having to build up funding for this thing: It’s not something we were budgeting for in 2025,” she said. “But it’s been one of those delightful, unexpected gifts you get in life.”
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