When you find yourself running low for your morning—or late-night—caffeine infusion, the Three Sisters Coffee House, has you covered.
Nicknamed Okotoks’ Smallest Coffee Shop, the Three Sisters sits outside the Neukom household, alongside Thomas Neukom and his wife Rikki’s community garden and Little Free Library—and is, in fact, similar to the function of a Little Free Library.
“If you have a coffee crisis at midnight, you know where to come now,” said Neukom of their newest initiative.
Located at their Hunter's Gate home across from Big Rock School, the coffee house is open 24/7 and is stocked with bags of Karma Coffee, courtesy of Rebel Bean Roasters in Okotoks.
Nearly identical in concept to Little Free Libraries, the coffee house has the addition of a cash box to collect the minimum donations of $10 per bag—$5 to cover the cost of the coffee, with the remainder being payed forward.
Three Sisters' patrons can sip easy, knowing that all the proceeds go to the Innocent Children Foundation, which helps fund children’s education in Kenya, through the Neukom's fundraiser 40 Books in 365 Days.
“We have supported Innocent Children for many years now raising money, and right now we have about 20 kids we support with school supplies, medical bills, mosquito nets, sometimes clothing, whatever they need to be able to go to school and stay in school,” he said.
“Sometimes that’s easy stuff, like money for pencils, and sometimes it’s a little bit more like a medical bill.”
Neukom said he got the idea after hearing about a coffee roaster in Calgary that sells its coffee on the fence, and knew that his friend and founder of Rebel Bean Roasters, Kerri Ann Colby, would be on board.
“(Colby) always supports our cause when we do our Big Bake and Book Sale, so I went home to my wife and said ‘hey, we’re going to open a coffee house,’” said Neukom. “It was a dream of my wife’s to have a coffee house at one point, and then I had to bring her down to earth pretty quick and say ‘actually, it’s a mini-coffee house.’”
Naming the coffee house was easy, said Neukom. The inspiration for the name is two parts: the Three Sisters mountain range, as an ode to the Neukom’s time living in Canmore; and their three daughters, who would always name their play-restaurant The Three Sisters.
The Neukom’s several community projects—such as the community garden, free library, coffee house, and their annual bake and book sales—are inspired by the desire to do, not tell.
“We live on a fairly busy street, right across from Big Rock School, and we just think that it’s one thing of supporting all those projects and show the kids that there’s more than thinking of yourself, but it’s another thing to actually do something and just try it out,” said Neukom.
“… There’s so many things you could support, but you could just do something in front of your house, you don’t have to go too far. Somebody has to start something and go from there.”
The coffee house opened Aug. 19, and Neukom said he had faith in the Okotoks community to respect the honour code of the initiative.
“We haven’t lost a bag of coffee yet,” he said. “Anybody who picked up a bag of coffee paid for it, so that’s nice to see that the community is honest and fair and that’s what we try to instill in our kids, too.”
As for the potential for theft, Neukom wasn’t concerned and said this project could happen anywhere, big city or small town.
“Sometimes you just have to trust people a little bit more and think a little bit bigger than just for yourself or your family, and we just put it out there and see what happens,” he said. “So far, so good… 99 per cent of people are good people.
“And we call it Karma Coffee, and karma goes both ways.”
Colby said she was a little more skeptical than the Neukoms at first, but was happy to be proven wrong.
“I was like ‘you really think that people aren’t going to steal the coffee?’” she said. “But Thomas has great faith in humanity and I have great faith in the Neukom family and what they’re doing for the students in Kenya, so I thought why not, we’ll give it a shot.”
In addition to offering Colby a liquidation centre of sorts for her store, she said the coffee house might just provide an additional benefit.
“It might cut down on the emergency coffee calls I get,” joked Colby. “People run out and they’re like ‘I know you’re closed right now, but do you have any coffee?’”
Colby said the community’s receptiveness to these types of community-driven ideas shows the support for small businesses.
“It’s a testament to the community,” she said. “The community supporting my independent business and their initiative that supports people in other parts of the world, if this takes off I think it’s just a really good reflection on our community.
“Okotoks is so good about supporting local business, and I think this kind of initiative will be well supported as well.”
