New café opens in town

Father-son duo runs shop focused on tea and giving back to the community

A Florida-based café celebrated the grand opening for its new Lynchburg storefront location Saturday morning, Mar. 5, after owner and Liberty student Spenser Foley opened its doors for tea and coffee lovers alike.

local — Employees at the Open Porch Café in Lynchburg served customers during opening weekend. Photo credit: Isaac Apon

Local — Employees at the Open Porch Café in Lynchburg served customers during opening weekend. Photo credit: Isaac Apon

Spenser Foley, a senior pre-law student at Liberty, works alongside his father Terry Foley in the operation of the Lynchburg location for the Open Porch Café, which has two other locations in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The Open Porch in Lynchburg is the company’s first storefront location to be built in Virginia and can be found near The Muse Coffee Company on Enterprise Drive.

With its recent debut, the café hopes to raise the standard for tea in the U.S. through offering what the company calls the first American commercial craft tea. The main focus of the Open Porch is its tea, not its coffee, like many other American cafés.

“When Starbucks opened up, they introduced coffee at a whole other level,” Terry Foley said. “Well, through our craft tea, we’re taking tea to a whole other level that no other tea company has gone before.”

The craft tea the Open Porch offers is shipped from a farm in Sri Lanka, an island off the coast of India, that Terry Foley found after six years of searching for what he calls the boldest, strongest and most developed tea he has ever tasted.

“I love iced tea, and I got so tired of having bad iced tea all the time,” Terry Foley said. “After tasting for years, I finally found what is now our craft tea. It doesn’t go bad, and it has a ton of flavor. I said this is what southern iced tea should be like.”

Refresh — The Open Porch Café offers several types of iced tea. Photo credit: Isaac Apon

Refresh — The Open Porch Café offers several types of iced tea. Photo credit: Isaac Apon

Along with its craft tea, the Open Porch offers an unsweetened tea and a Florida-sweet tea at its locations.

Customers can also choose from a variety of tea blends that range from a light roast amber tea that is subtle in flavor to a dark forged blend that has twice as much caffeine and is the café’s boldest in taste.

The Open Porch also sells a variety of breakfast food, hot or cold sliders and soup.

The profits that the Open Porch location in Lynchburg receives are not only being directed toward growing the business location. Spenser Foley noted the café’s intentions in giving back to the community in its outreach program called ChariTea.

On average, the Open Porch donates approximately 3,500 doughnuts a week to churches in the community to enhance their services as a part of their ChariTea program. The Open Porch will begin with Gospel Community Church in Lynchburg.

The café’s merchandise sales are also spent to help operate Imagine No Malaria, an organization that seeks to eradicate malaria in Africa.

“Yes, we want to make money, that’s pretty much why anyone runs a business, but we’re doing it very intentionally and honoring God every step of the way,” Terry Foley said. “Our whole mission in running this business is to serve something greater.”

Although the tea sales at the locations in Florida currently comprise 65-75 percent of total sales, the coffee at the Open Porch Café has a distinct story in and of itself.

The coffee the Open Porch sells comes from Café Kreyol, a company based in Fairfax, Virginia that grows and produces its coffee in Haiti in an effort to stimulate the economy in the impoverished country. According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, 59 percent of Haitians live below the national poverty line.

Terry Foley said he is confident the relationship between the Open Porch and Café Kreyol will help in the coffee company’s effort to create jobs in impoverished Haitian communities. It is one of the many ways the Foleys plan to continue to support outside ministries through their business.

“If you come into our shop and buy a tea or coffee, you’re making a difference,” Terry Foley said. “That’s what our goal has always really been.”

Young is a feature reporter.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *