Welcome back to our Monday feature of our COVID19 Photography Project!
Rise and Grind Café and Market is a vision come to life by owner Christina Rushton. The café opened in December 2019 as a full service Café offering dine in and take out. The Café was doing well in their first three months of business when the COVID19 pandemic forced them to shut down their in person dining options and move strictly to take out. The pandemic originally created much less foot traffic to the café and resulted in the difficult decision to furlough all additional staff leaving Christina and her manager to handle all of the day to day take out orders as well as the Meals for Front Line Workers they were preparing for 17 weeks. In June, the Café made the difficult decision to close for good, but that wasn’t the end of their story, because Perkasie Burough & all of their adoring patrons refused to give up on this cherished piece of town. Pulling resources, ideas and working together with the borough and community the Café decided to close for three weeks to renovate the middle portion of their space, creating a beautiful and welcoming market shop. The Market offers different selections from local area businesses such as:
Small Batch Kitchen Nutty Novelties Bucks County Biscotti Co.
Jersey Pickles World of Honey Bucks County Brittle & More
Solebury Orchard Long Lane Studios & More
While the pandemic forced the discontinuation of full service dine-in at the Café, Christina feels that it allowed the change to a Coffee Café and Market benefiting local small businesses, that she said is very much true to her.
The Market also opened up different opportunities to offer holiday gifts & gift baskets created with different items featuring the local items within the market.
Rise and Grind Café is following all State Health Department and CDC mandates and guidelines, including cleaning/sanitizing high touch areas, cleaning and disinfecting after using machines and of course wearing masks. They have small seating available in the back of the café to sit and enjoy your food and coffee, or make it your office for the day (the smells coming from the kitchen & coffee bar are to die for!) or you can swing in and pickup your favorite drink & snack to go!
Something that Christina learned going through the pandemic as a small business owner? That she is stronger than she ever thought she was and that she doesn’t need to handle it all alone. She learned that her staff & community were there to support her through this unprecedented time and she was able to rely on them to help her!
*If you’re stopping by Rise & Grind Café definitely try one of their latte’s or coffees, and you cannot go wrong with a single one of the baked items! I tried the Peanut Butter Bar, because I’m a sucker for anything chocolate and peanut butter!
Rise & Grind Café
1 N. 7th St. Perkasie
Hours: M-F 8am to 4pm
Saturday 8am to 2pm
Sunday 9am to 1pm
Facebook: @riseandgrindcafe18944
Denna Kline Photography 