A Good Day’s Work
How a Centre Inspires grant helped transform a coffee shop into a pathway to greater independence.
Every morning, Good Day Café opens like any other neighborhood coffee shop.
The espresso machine comes to life. Breakfast orders begin filling the kitchen. Regular customers stop by before work, while others settle in with coffee and conversation. It is busy, familiar, and welcoming.
That normalcy was always the vision.
For decades, Strawberry Fields has worked alongside people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, helping them build more independent lives. One challenge remained especially persistent: finding meaningful, long-term employment. Too often, people who were eager and capable of working encountered limited opportunities or employers willing to invest in their potential.
Rather than waiting for those opportunities to appear, Strawberry Fields decided to create one.
The idea was never simply to open a coffee shop. It was to build a successful business where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities could earn competitive wages, develop marketable skills, gain confidence, and build the experience needed to lead more independent lives.
In 2017, Centre Foundation helped turn that vision into reality with a $100,000 Centre Inspires grant. The investment gave Strawberry Fields the momentum to move the project forward and attract the additional support needed to open Good Day Café.
Since then, the café has become a thriving local business and a workplace where opportunity is built into the daily routine. Employees learn customer service, food preparation, teamwork, communication, and problem-solving while serving thousands of customers each year just minutes from downtown State College.
Since opening, Good Day Café has recorded more than 302,323 customer transactions, provided 312,815 hours of integrated, competitive employment, and employed 34 people with disclosed disabilities. Along the way, State College Magazine readers have voted it as the area’s Best Coffee Shop five years in a row.
Those numbers tell the story of a successful business. Stories like this one reveal something more lasting. A job can provide a paycheck, but it can also provide confidence, purpose, relationships, and the opportunity to be known for one’s abilities instead of one’s limitations.
One employee described what the job has meant personally:
“I have never loved a job so much. My bosses are so nice, our customers are very patient with me. They are like friends. I used to be so nervous when there was a line. Now I am much less nervous. Everyone is helpful. This is like a family for me.”
For many employees, Good Day Café isn’t simply where they work. It’s where they discover what they’re capable of, and where they carry that confidence into the rest of their lives.