Thank You for Sipping and Supporting Central City Coffee!

THANK YOU, Portland, for sipping and supporting Central City Coffee for the past five years! Due to COVID-19, we’ve made the difficult decision to permanently close our retail operations.

Central City Coffee began in 2012 as a social enterprise and evolved into a women’s empowerment job training program in 2015. The program specialized in helping women achieve gainful, permanent employment and self-sufficiency. Most of the trainees came from backgrounds of homelessness, substance use and involvement with the criminal justice system. These were resilient clients, many of them single moms working to rebuild their lives after facing homelessness and substance use disorder. With the help of Central City Coffee, these women have gained valuable skills to help them achieve their goals.

The all-female crew did everything from roasting coffee to office administration to sales, gaining a variety of skills. Over the past five years of operation, we estimate we provided training to fifty women.

This closure is bittersweet for many reasons, but it’s the right decision for CCC.

There is good news, however. We still have an inventory of donated coffee beans. In the coming months, CCC will be working with Percasso/Nossa Familia to sell these beans in a smaller office coffee operation.

Other social enterprise opportunities will be considered in the future to fulfill the mission of CCC Coffee, to offer focused assistance to women in their path to self-sustainable careers.

We can’t tell you how much we’ve appreciated the support of our community over the years.

You sipped … to do good.

From the bottom of our coffee cups, thank you!