Next time you’re at Mumford, stop and get a snack at the Good Vibes Only Café.
Andria Bellamy’s self-contained class opened the cafe on Oct. 13 to give students experience with entrepreneurship. It started, in part, because Bellamy likes to get the students out of the classroom.
“I’m very hands on. Instead of talking about it I’m going to be about it. And I want my students to have employability skills when they leave Mumford,” Bellamy said.
She explained that they do a little bit of everything for this skills-building project.
“So basically, this is a whole curriculum; it’s a little bit of econ; a little bit of English; a little bit of math; and speech,” Bellamy said.
Bellamy said the name for the project came from the students themselves.
“They were like, ‘Wow! There’s a lot of people hating on each other, fighting in the cafeteria. I don’t like this vibe,’” Bellamy said. “Then they said, ‘Hey! That sounds like a name—Good Vibes Only!’”
On the sign at the entrance, under the name of the cafe are the words respect, kindness, and service.
“When you come in, it should be calm and chill with no negative vibes,” Bellamy said. “People can sit down, grab a cup of coffee or a donut and just talk and laugh, and when someone’s in need, service them.”
Seniors Larry Parrot and Emmanuel Hayes do stock and cleaning at the cafe and they said students are getting skills they can use in the real world. They also said the cafe has been busy since they opened.
“We like it like that,” Hayes said. “When people come in, we send them good vibes and we get good vibes from them in return.”
The Good Vibes Only Café is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. It sells drinks and a variety of baked goods and other snacks and has daily specials. The cafe is hoping to start selling Mumford gear soon.
