Racine Dominicans to close coffee shop to focus on counseling

After five years, a group of Catholic sisters is pulling the plug on a fair trade coffee shop and retail store they opened in Racine in 2008, so they can focus on the counseling and social services ministry those ventures were intended to fund.

The HOPES Center of Racine, a ministry of the Racine Dominicans, says it will close its Cup of Hope coffee shop and Just Trade store in early 2014 and move its counseling program to larger space a few doors down on 6th St.

"The shops have been losing money, and the longer we keep those entrepreneurial ventures going, the more we are putting at risk the counseling services," said HOPES Center executive director Sister Maryann McMahon.

"It was time for us to put our energies where we are growing."

A group of Racine Dominicans opened the businesses at 506 7th St. in October 2008 with the idea that the retail operations would help to fund the counseling services for the homeless and uninsured. But the retail businesses slowed with the economy and — with no marketing budget or expertise — the sisters worried they might take the counseling services with them.

Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/racine-dominicans-to-close-coffee-shop-to-focus-on-counseling-b99114107z1-227471311.html#ixzz2ho9MGBmM

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I'm not sure how the order is, but I like the idea. It seems a little more Benedictine than Dominican though.

Here's a recent flier from their Facebook page... (I totally agree with the last one on this list). I think Americans have a much bigger problem with the original deadly sins though.