Former One Acre Café under new ownership, set to become neurodiverse-friendly café
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) – The One Acre Ca?fé in downtown Johnson City shut its doors in May 2023. After sitting vacant for almost a year to date, the dining room will once again be filled thanks to a mother with a dream for her daughter’s future and others just like her.
Jennifer Sweet and her husband Kevin announced on April 5 that they had acquired the former ca?fé. They plan to turn the building into a place of employment for those like their daughter, Kate, who has autism.
Kate attends Jeremiah School, a non-profit school for students on the neurodivergent spectrum. Jennifer learned that the school does great things for its students, but life after graduation isn’t as supportive.
“They’re very supported in Jeremiah School,” said Jennifer Sweet. “But once they get out of Jeremiah School, they are not. The jobs are very few; [nationally] 85% of them graduate to the couch.”
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The Sweets teamed up with Jo Cullen, who serves as the executive director for Jeremiah School. Together they came up with the idea for the Jeremiah Ca?fé to support the students outside of the classroom.
“What this ca?fé does is guarantee our students somewhere to start to build those workplace skills,” said Cullen.
Sweet and Cullen said she hopes the ca?fé will help the Jeremiah School students, as well as change the way those on the spectrum are viewed.
“We didn’t want to just help Kate,” said Sweet. “We wanted to help as many kids as we possibly could. And that’s kind of what this is going to be about, too, is demystifying autism in the community.”
“This will not only give employment now to students,” said Cullen. “It’s going to hopefully make Johnson City a more inclusive and neurodiverse friendly environment.”
The students are receiving food service training at the school, thanks to the school’s principal.
“She’s been in the food business before she came into teaching,” Cullen said. “In school, we’ve just had a new teaching kitchen open. So she is actually doing mock restaurants and the students are learning behind the scenes, the front of the house, and they’re serving each other, they’re cooking the food and serving each other.”
Although the former One Acre Ca?fé operated as a non-profit, the Jeremiah Ca?fé will function for profit to pay the students, current and former, who are working there.
“My main goal here is meaningful employment and meaningful employment costs money,” said Sweet. “So everything will go right back into it, so we can give the kids those raises and get them to levels where they can live.”
Cullen and Sweet hope to grow community support for the ca?fé.
“[We want to] encourage the community to come see us,” said Cullen.
“When you come and support this ca?fé, that money’s going right back to those kids,” said Sweet.
Cullen and Sweet said they hope to open their doors in August.
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