Moji Coffee, a workplace for people with disabilities, to close in September

The national unemployment rate for people with disabilities is about twice that of the general population. Moji Coffee and More in Winston-Salem is one of the local inclusive workplaces providing opportunities for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. But its five-year run is coming to an end.

Sam Garrison has worked at Moji since its beginning. He started out making and serving coffee, a position in the company known as a “Mojista.” In 2021, he was promoted to supervisor.

“This place gives a lot of opportunities that other places don’t," he says. "As somebody with a disability, a lot of my jobs previously were like, cleaning tables or stuff that like didn’t seem like I was reaching my full potential and I feel like Moji has really given me my full potential.”

But Garrison’s time at the coffee shop will end in the coming weeks. The company, built on the prospect of providing a place to work for people like him with disabilities, is closing.

Now he’s not sure what is next for him and his co-workers.

“We’ve become kind of family over the past five years so it’s been hard to see this end,” he says.

Moji opened on Trade Street in 2019 and less than a year later opened another branch just a few blocks away in the Forsyth County Central Library. The library spot is already shuttered and the main store will close in September. The final date has not yet been set.

Michael Heelan is chairman of Moji’s board of directors. He says a shifting business and nonprofit landscape led to the decision to close. 

“Moji, when it began, we received a massive groundswell of community support to open and to continue growing, but it was built on an operational deficit," he says. "The general rule of thumb when I joined the board about four years ago was that half of our operation was covered by our coffee shop revenue. As we grew, that very quickly became just a third.”

Moji is largely grant-funded. Heelan says the pandemic changed the way many providers — and individual donors — looked at giving. As a result, it became harder for the company to bring in money not made directly from sales.

“In the end, we just realized we didn't have a financial path forward.”

Dan Wellman is the director of programming for Moji. He says employees were notified of the closure during a weeknight all-staff meeting. 

“Emotions were high, and the reactions have been anywhere from disappointed to devastated, and little bit of everything in between,” he says.

Wellman says a key for many of them will be finding places where they will feel comfortable, supported and heard about their needs and barriers.

"They are looking for some opportunity that's going to replace what Moji has been to them," he says. "And for some, it's a social opportunity. For some, it's employment. For some, it's a very complex mix of many things.

Over the course of its run, Moji has employed nearly 50 Mojistas. Five of them worked their way up to supervisors and 17 have moved on to positions at places like Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and Walmart.

Nationally, as of 2023, about 22% of people with disabilities were employed, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the highest recorded percentage since the bureau first started tracking the data in 2008.

Locally, there should be enough openings to provide for Moji’s displaced workforce, says Troy Chavez. He works with the disabilities community as part of his job at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in Winston-Salem.

"There is definitely more than enough room for them," he says. "If the employers are willing and ready, and are they educated enough to kind of take on a workforce like that."

Chavez says coffee shops like Moji provide a great place for people with disabilities to start. But ideally, he’d like to see them move on to integrated workplaces with people from all backgrounds. And, he says, there are good reasons for businesses to take them on.

"The statistics back that people with disabilities stay longer in employment and are more reliable than people in the general population," he says. "Once they get that chance, they will thrive in that opportunity."

Moji’s closing won’t end these types of coffee shop opportunities. In recent years, the marketplace with a similar model of employing people with disabilities has grown. In the Triad, they include Cam’s Coffee Co., Bitty and Beau’s, A Special Blend and Joy Bar Coffee.