CFS launching ‘Joe’

Joe on the Go is nearly ready to roll.
A unique combination of a business start-up and an innovative approach to changing young lives, the new venture being put together by Community and Family Services hopes to have a grand opening in about a month.
The project is the brainchild of Scott Blakely, associate executive director of CFS.
The six-county anti-poverty agency, which still plans to move into the former Ken Kunkle auto dealership at the corner of West Race and North Meridian streets in Portland by early next year, has been on the lookout for revenue streams that produce “unrestricted funds.”
As executive director Andy Glentzer has explained it, most of the state and federal support CFS receives is program-specific, meaning it can only be used for limited purposes. The agency believes it can respond more effectively if it has more flexibility in terms of funding.
That has led to some creative thinking.
Blakely wrote an innovation grant proposal and submitted it to the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority. He knew that there were plans to have a coffee shop in the new CFS building, so why not take it one step further: A mobile coffee shop that could eventually have a presence in the entire seven-county CFS area.
And so, when the grant was approved, Joe on the Go was born.
Here’s how it works:
•CFS identified young people whose lives had already been touched by CFS programs but needed a boost.
•Thanks to the grant, a trailer has been equipped with state-of-the-art coffee shop equipment that would have any Starbucks manager drooling.
•The young “barristas” are paid a “very good” hourly rate but are required to continue their education. They receive a stipend for day care, another for gasoline and still another tied to credit hours they achieve in classes via John Jay Center for Learning.
•As Joe on the Go employees, they stabilize their income, acquire the discipline needed to get back in the classroom and build the work habits that will take them into the next phase of their lives.
“Community and Family Services’ mission is empowering people to improve,” said Blakely. That’s what this is all about. “Our barristas, we require them to go back to school.”
Other partners on the project include Crimson Cup Coffee, a purveyor of premium fair-trade coffee beans, and Farmers State Bank.
Tom Oliver, manager of Joe on the Go, is a retired sheriff’s deputy now working on a business degree from Indiana Wesleyan University.
The emphasis, Oliver said, is on high quality coffee.
“This is a premium bean,” he said.
Plans call for Joe on the Go to set up in a drive-through format on the former car lot at the northwest corner of Race and Meridian streetrs, though staff training is still taking place. Once CFS has finally relocated into the Kunkle building and a bricks-and-mortar version of Joe on the Go can be established, the trailer will be visible throughout the six counties (Jay, Huntington, Adams, Wells, Blackford and Randolph) the organization serves.
“Once we get our brick-and-mortar up and going, we are going to take this operation on the road,” said Blakely.
All net revenues will go to CFS as unrestricted funds that will provide greater flexibility to the organization.
To Blakely’s knowledge, Joe on the Go is a unique innovation for anti-poverty agencies.
“We don’t know of another,” he said. “There’s not a lot doing this.”