The Garden Studio Cafe: Growing Hope

The Garden Studio Cafe is Civil Righteousness Inc.'s community transformation center in Ferguson, which opened to the public in June 2025. Housed in a restored historic building that previously served as the Corner Coffee House — the heartbeat of Ferguson for nearly two decades — The Garden functions simultaneously as a café, creative studio, and co-op commissary kitchen. It is also home to the Imago Dei Gallery: a permanent, museum-quality contemplative prayer space open to the public.

The Garden is not a church, but it is saturated with Christian practice. Every cup of coffee served and every conversation facilitated there is embedded in the spiritual logic of lament, hospitality, fellowship, and reconciliation. In addition to serving great coffee to the St.Louis community, it is the home of CR's programming such as The Table (curated courageous conversations that lead to reconciliation) and Spark Tank (a 10 month entrepreneur learn-to-launch effort in partnership with Benedictine college that prepares local aspiring and established entrepreneurs to start and/or expand their businesses.)

Spark Tank was born out of Civil Righteousness' distinctive mission — pursuing reconciliation and restorative justice through spiritual, cultural, and economic renewal. It is rooted in Ferguson, a community whose history demands that programs of economic empowerment remain anchored in, accountable to, and led by the community itself.

We currently operate with an annual budget of approximately $400,000, yet we are delivering nearly $2,000,000 in programmatic impact. We are doing more with less — and that is not a sustainable model for the long term. While we are adding various streams of revenue to The Garden, The most pressing gap we face is the absence of dedicated staff capacity and funding to anchor our operations in a way that ensures our long term sustainability. 

We are pursuing major grant funding. However, with our immediate fundraising goal of $200,000; we hope to: 

1. Secure 300lbs of green coffee beans for $7500, reducing our current monthly costs by $700-800; maximizing our potential toward self sustaining coffee operations. 

2. Hire a full-time general manager and reposition some of our part time staff into more effective roles. 

3. Invest in some critical building and equipment maintenance/upgrades. 

4. Refresh the Imago Dei Gallery + Exhibits. 

5. Reduce stress and create financial margin by maintaining three to six months of operating capital for The Garden in our accounts. 

6. Invest in the ongoing software development and support of our mobile prayer-walking app, Holy Here. It has now been downloaded by 20,000 users and is being used daily in 104 countries!

As we approach the one year anniversary from the day that our doors opened on June 7th, 2025; we have an incredible amount of things to celebrate. Meeting these needs could position us for tremendous impact in the years to come as we continue to build an ecosystem of transformation and cultivate the soil of our Garden for HOPE TO GROW!