Pawtucket’s Newest Coffee Shop is a Force for Good
LIFE Cafe, now open at Shri, offers workforce training opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
LIFE Cafe is now open at Shri in Pawtucket. (Photos by Lauren Clem)
Early on a Monday morning, residents of the nearby apartments above Shri yoga studio sit in the newly opened LIFE Cafe enjoying coffees and breakfast. One resident looks up from his sausage, egg and cheese to tell Shri founder Alison Bologna how much he was looking forward to this day.
“I was waiting for this day since October when you originally were supposed to open. I was excited,” he says between bites of his sandwich.
LIFE Cafe is the newest addition to the Pawtucket property that includes a yoga studio, apartments and administrative offices as well as a food pantry operated by the Segue Institute for Learning and the Flying Shuttles art studio for people with intellectual and development disabilities. The whole thing is the brainchild of Alison Bologna, the WJAR broadcast journalist and social entrepreneur who founded Shri in 2010. Founded as a yoga outreach program to bring yoga to people of all backgrounds, the organization in recent years has taken on the redevelopment of 390 Pine St., a historic building that now serves as home base. Bologna recalls how she came up with the idea to host LIFE Cafe in an unused garage on the property over lunch.
“I looked across the table at Liz and said, ‘You want to do a cafe?’” she says.
“Liz” is Liz Wiedenhofer, executive director of LIFE Inc. The Bristol-based organization provides services for people with developmental disabilities. The two women had long worked together: LIFE Inc. was one of the first partners to help Shri offer adaptive yoga classes to people with disabilities, and Bologna’s sister receives services from LIFE Inc.
According to Wiedenhofer, the organization has operated a cafe where participants learn workforce training skills inside the Rhode Island Veterans Home in Bristol for about fifteen years. LIFE Cafe offers a similar workforce training program for participants, but with more interaction with the general public. The cafe is open six days a week on Conant Street and serves coffee and tea along with breakfast sandwiches and other bakery items.
“With our connection, we knew this would be the perfect way to come in intentionally and expand our services to Pawtucket and Central Falls,” Wiedenhofer says.
The property has been under construction since 2020, when Bologna purchased it for Shri’s new headquarters. It served as the administration building for the surrounding Conant Thread/Coats & Clark Mill Complex in the 1800s and early 1900s. Many of those mill buildings have since burned to the ground or been turned into apartments, with a large apartment complex under construction across the street.
As for the garage on the property, Bologna says many people encouraged her to demolish it, but she had a vision to transform it using historic preservation funds.
“Everyone said just tear it down. It’s an eyesore,” she recalls.
Customers at LIFE Cafe on Monday morning.
On Monday, Aug. 19, LIFE Cafe employees and supporters gathered to mark the cafe’s opening after more than a year of renovations. Along with residents of the neighboring apartments, Bologna and Wiedenhofer were joined by Danielle Zavada, executive director of the John E. Fogarty Foundation. The foundation supports projects that improve quality of life for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and provided funding for the cafe.
“For us, this checks so many boxes. It’s a program that can potentially be replicated,” Zavada says. “We haven’t received a proposal like this before, so we were excited by it.”
Along with breakfast sandwiches, the cafe menu offers bagels with toppings including avocado, cream cheese and lox, and Bob’s Red Mill oatmeal. It also carries Shri bark and cookies, brownies and scones prepared by Cross Country Cookies, the same nut-free, wholesale baker in Pawtucket that makes Shri bark. The drink menu features espresso drinks along with hot and iced tea, bottled drinks and drip coffee from another local company, New Harvest Coffee Roasters.
Wiedenhofer says they look forward to the cafe serving as a gathering space for both the organization’s clients and the wider neighborhood.
“That’s what we want the space to be. Not just workforce development, but also a gathering spot for this community,” she says.
LIFE Cafe is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
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