With dreams of being a barista, 9-year-old opens pop-up café
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — You’ve probably seen a pop-up lemonade stand in your neighborhood, but what about a pop-up café?
A 9-year-old boy from Lancaster, with dreams of being a barista, has been serving up coffee in his neighborhood. He’s giving back to the community one cup of joe at a time.
Sunday mornings are a grind for Reese Giza, who owns and operates the Cat Cup Café. It’s located inside his parent’s garage — he is 9, after all.
“He had a little Melissa and Doug wooden Keurig that he used to play with,” Reese’s mother Kristen Aquilina said. “Then this summer, when third grade ended, on his summer bucket list was to run a café out of our garage.”
Reese dreams of being a barista one day, so it’s no surprise he had this idea to open a coffee shop. The family stocked up on coffee, hot chocolate and pastries, and after spilling the beans to the Lancaster community, they were open for business.
“This year I decided I wanted to make this my café,” Reese said.
Aquilina said she thought Reese “was a little crazy” for wanting to open a café at age 9, but she has always supported his endeavors and tried to make his dreams come true.
“She did thought I was crazy, but she said yes,” Reese said. “It’s really nice to meet new people and see what the community is like in Lancaster.”
Every Sunday this summer, Reese and his family served people coffee from inside their garage.
“It’s awesome,” Reese’s grandfather, Ronald Giza, said. “It started as something small and blossomed into this.”
It’s all free, but people can leave a tip — and they do. In fact, the support has been so overwhelming, Reese decided to donate half of his earnings to a different local charity each week.
“This is unique to our neighborhood,” said Darrin Harzewski, Reese’s neighbor. “A lot of times I think that we as a community always come together to try and find a good thing to do for each other.”
This Sunday’s donations go toward the P.U.N.T. Pediatric Cancer Collaborative.
“Being Reese’s mom has been just the greatest adventure,” Aquilina said. “He always has such loving, kind ideas.”
While he works toward his dream of being a barista, this 9-year-old is serving is up so much more than a latte.
“It just makes me so proud,” Aquilina said. “Reese has had a lot of struggles in his life. He has ADHD and sensory processing disorder, but to see him thrive and just get the community together has been such a wonderful thing for our family. We’ve loved meeting everybody, and it’s all because of him.”
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Sarah Minkewicz is an Emmy-nominated reporter and Buffalo native who has been a part of the News 4 team since 2019. Follow Sarah on Twitter @SarahMinkewicz and click here to see more of her work.
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