Avery’s Modern Teahouse is all about building community
Five-year-old Avery Bland may not be able to express herself in a typical way, but when the youngster rolls into her new namesake teahouse in Loveland, it’s clear that she’s pretty darn happy.
Avery is nonverbal, blind and wheelchair-bound. “She smiles the entire time, and she squeals while she’s there,” said mom Kristen Bland, who opened Avery’s Modern Teahouse, which employs people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD), in February. “When I walk in, it’s like, ‘This is what it’s all about. This is about community.’ ”
Bland isn’t exactly a foodand-drink industry vet — the teahouse is the designer’s first foray into the restaurant business, albeit as a nonprofit — but after hearing from fellow parents in the special-needs community that their kids wanted jobs but weren’t finding businesses that would give them a chance, she made it her mission to create a spot that could train and employ them.
One of those workers is 20-year-old Ben Diaz, who recently earned his first paycheck at Avery’s. (And he has saved every penny of it.)
Diaz, who was born with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) and hydrocephalus, works the POS system, stocks the teas, and delivers food and drinks to customers. He loves working with the people who come in to the cheery shop, especially kids, and he’s excited to work his first baby shower, held in one of Avery’s private event rooms, soon.
His mom, Michelle Diaz, said he’s excelling in his new role. “This has been a dream of ours that we weren’t sure would come to fruition. When I picked him up (from Avery’s), he said, ‘I feel independent, Mom, and I feel super proud of me.’ That was it, that’s all I needed to hear. He loves to give back, and this is another way for him to give back to his community. We see more of a future for him now, and we’re excited to see where this opportunity takes him.”
Avery’s IDD workers are part of the government-funded School
to Work Alliance Program (SWAP). Bland said that SWAP pays for those initial hours while the students (what they call SWAP participants) learn new skills and get real-life job experience. The goal is for these workers to find lasting careers.
Many businesses continue to be reluctant to hire special-needs workers, which is a shame, Bland said, as they’re deserving of more opportunities. “The special-needs community, we have so many people who want jobs. That’s been one of the biggest challenges, when you have so many people who want jobs and deserve jobs, and we still have to turn them down because we don’t have enough jobs to fulfill the need.”
Englewood’s Brewabiltiy and Aurora’s Howdy Homemade Ice Cream operate with similar missions, to provide work and training for members of the IDD community. They are both for-profit businesses, and while no one expects to get rich, they’d like to prove that the model is financially viable. Hopefully, Bland said, more companies will look to IDD workers to solve their own hiring needs.
Diaz and the teahouse’s six other IDD employees are paired with workers with more traditional experience. The menu and setup are designed to be doable for all the workers, so the food is grab-and-go, the teahouse is cashless, and the prep for the coffees and teas is fairly straightforward. But that doesn’t mean that the menu isn’t great tasting.
Bland hand-picked all 13 teas, being sure to include a mix of teas for both avid tea drinkers and people wanting to try something fun.
While Diaz hasn’t gotten the chance to try the menu yet himself — he’s very strict about not eating and drinking on the job — he said that the iced sunset peach tea has been super popular, and they can’t keep the breakfast burritos from Fort Collins-based Momma Perez in stock.
The Loveland community seems to be loving its new teahouse. Local businesses are hosting monthly meetings at Avery’s and people have been booking the private rooms for parties and showers.
“It’s been amazing to see how the community has rallied around it,” Bland said.
“The response has been almost overwhelming, in a fantastic way. When we opened, I thought we should expect 100 people that day, but we had 330 people in two hours! The line was out the door the entire time.”
While the teahouse’s young namesake may not be able to speak her approval, she’s clearly loving the space created for people like her.
“Any time you go in the teahouse, there’s a parent coming to Colorado. Its work targets the Clear Creek Canyon, the Gunnison Basin, the Northern Front Range, Northwest Colorado, the San Luis Valley, South Park and the Wet Mountain Valley.
Landowners receive tax incentives for putting their plots in easements plus the guarantee they can farm it for generations.
They can also sell the land in the future and the easement gets passed along to the new owner as part of the deal.
Conserving open space is not only beneficial for the people who work here, but also the people who play here, Caligiuri said.
“People come to Colorado of a special-needs child, there’s a special-needs child, there are wheelchairs everywhere like Avery’s, there are kids just like Avery squealing,” Bland said. “She goes in there and she’s so happy. It’s been really special.” and both visitors and residents spend a lot of money because of the amazing, epic views. So protecting these viewsheds is also an important way to protect Colorado’s economy,” he said.
Both Olander and Caligiuri maintain they are not anti-development nor are they anti-buc-ee’s. However, they are in favor of raising awareness about the oftentimes unseen impacts of urbanization. Still, neither has yet patronized the beavertopia.
“I’m sure I’ll go over there at some point once the hype has died down,” Olander said. “But if you ask my dad, he’ll probably never step foot in there.”
The final curtain will come down this summer on Cirque du Soleil’s longrunning show “The Beatles Love,” a cultural icon on the Las Vegas Strip that brought band members Paul Mccartney and Ringo Starr back together for public appearances throughout its 18-year run.
Cirque announced on Tuesday that the show housed at the Mirage will end on July 7, part of the iconic hotel-casino’s major renovation plan to rebrand itself into the Hard Rock Las Vegas.
Stéphane Lefebvre, CEO of the Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group, said in a statement that more than 11.5 million people have seen the show — an energetic portrayal of the Fab Four’s history and music with aerial stunts and whimsical dance numbers on a colorful, 360-degree stage.
“We are grateful to the creators, cast, crew and all involved in bringing this show to life,” Lefebvre said, “and we know The Beatles LOVE will live on long after the final bow.”
In a separate statement, Joe Lupo, president of the Mirage, thanked the Cirque performers and crew members working behind the scenes “who played a part in entertaining guests and bridged generations” for nearly two decades.
The production premiered in the summer of 2006, with red carpet appearances by both Mccartney
and Starr, as well as Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, wife of the late Beatle George Harrison. They reunited a year later to celebrate the show’s first anniversary.
According to
Cirque, the show was born out of the friendship between its founder Guy Laliberté and Harrison, the Beatles’ lead guitarist who died in 2001. John Lennon was killed in 1980.
The show is set to
aBen Diaz serves a customer. specialized soundtrack that earned Cirque two Grammy Awards in 2008, a first for the entertainment company. Cirque said the Beatles’ original producer, George Martin, and his son produced and mixed the 26-song soundscape, pulling from 130 songs from the Beatles’ powerhouse music catalog and archives.
The current cast includes 11 original members from the show’s inception, according to Cirque. More than 11,000 costume pieces are worn on show night, including 250 pairs of shoes and 225 wigs. Audiences throughout the show’s run, Cirque said, have been showered with 13.5 tons of confetti during the final act, which closes with the Beatles’ 1967 hit “All You Need is Love.”