Parlour Coffee & Main Street Project Partnership

Main Street Project is so excited to share that local business Parlour Coffee (located at 468 Main Street) will be partnering with us for the rest of 2018.

This partnership was born from a shop break in they experienced earlier this year. The owner of the shop got in touch a couple of days after the break in with the intention of turning a not great situation into community action, and he chose us as the community organization to support. They chose us because they feel that we do vital work in our community and by supporting our work they can help make a difference in the lives of our city’s most vulnerable people.

Parlour Coffee will be donating a percentage of their sales from the year to Main Street Project, as well as doing monthly donation drives for much needed items at MSP and using their social media platform to help others learn about the work we do here.

Here is the message Parlour put out on their social media accounts:

You may have heard that last month our shop was broken into. There was some damage, and we lost some money. At first we were angered, annoyed, discouraged and, it must be said, sorry for ourselves. We shared some of our frustrations publicly, and received many messages of support from our community, for which we were very grateful. As the dust settled, we came to feel at odds with our anger towards the person or people who broke in. Because, the truth is, that while this was no doubt a setback for a small business such as ours, that we were, and will be, fine. This loss did not force us to go hungry, and we had the capacity to pick up the pieces. We will probably never know who broke in, and we can’t presume to understand anything of the life they have had. However, we do believe that they were in need; that a desperate situation led to their actions, and that they are therefore deserving of our compassion, and nothing less. We have to care more about the person or people who did this, than we do about the money we lost. We are taking some steps towards an attempt to effect some positive change for those that face similarly desperate situations. We felt that one way to make this attempt was to partner with an organization that makes it their mission to serve the most vulnerable members of our community. Therefore we are partnering with Main Street Project. Starting today, and for the remainder of 2018 we will be donating a percentage of our sales to their programming, and will be using our social media platform to highlight some of the work they do and some of the realities their clients face. We are excited and humbled by this partnership. We acknowledge the privilege of being able to give, and we do not pretend to understand the depths of the difficulties that many members of our community face. We have much to learn, and there is much work to be done. Thank you for reading. ✌

A post shared by Parlour Coffee (@parlourcoffee) on Feb 1, 2018 at 5:01am PST

So, there we are! A great partnership has begun, for which we are very grateful. Many thanks to the wonderful team at Parlour Coffee. We are so looking forward to working with you this year!

2018-02-02 CBC article about the partnership

2018-02-03 CityNews story about partnership

2018-02-15 Winnipeg Free Press story about partnership