It is a cup of coffee. It is a breakfast sandwich. It is a green tea.
For Silverdale Baptist Church, though, it is much more than that.
Two years ago, days before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, the church on Bonny Oaks Drive launched Oaks Coffee House.
The popular outlet offers no visual connection to the Baptist church across the street. There are no crosses on the walls. No fliers about attending services grace the tables. Nothing on its website.
This is intentional.
"It's for the community," said Gus Hernandez, missions and outreach pastor at Silverdale, standing in the dining area on a late February afternoon. He gestured to those seated around him. "Half the people here don't come to our church."
The seeming oddity of Silverdale's nonprofit business does not stop there. Last year, the shop began turning a profit, and when it did so, that money did not go to the church. Instead, at the end of 2021, the church sent $34,000 to ministries across Chattanooga.
"They're just champions for us and the work that we do," said Anthony Watkins, executive director of Hope for the Inner City, one of the donation recipients.
Sell things, help people
The first days at Oaks were rough. After the shop opened its doors in 2020 the coronavirus pandemic shut down the country and the world.
It was a desert, Oaks founder and general manager Cody Pope said in an interview. Pope had been working in restaurant management for about 10 years, as well as involved with Silverdale's missions work, when conversations about starting the Oaks began.
He was in a period of his life when he did not know whether to stay in the food industry. He began praying and an odd answer came back, he said.
"I was in a very dark point,' he said. "I was like, 'Lord, what do you want me to do?' and coffee came up."
Around the same time, Silverdale's leadership was casting a vision for what would become the Oaks. Pope had the experience to run such a business. He took about two years to learn about coffee and production. With friends, he visited cafes in Nashville to study their layouts and design choices.
Unlike when starting a franchise business - such as Starbucks or Dunkin' - the employment manual, the policy guide and the menu were not already written. That needed to be molded from scratch. The business logo? Created from scratch.
"There's so many small decisions you don't know until you're there," Pope said. "Everything has to be written for the first time."
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As people's movement in the Chattanooga region began to return to normal during the pandemic, the Oaks began seeing more customers. Today, between 350 and 400 people come by each day, between its drive-through and dining area. The shop employs between 15 and 20 people, Pope said.
Pope played a key role in designing the layout of the cafe and the upstairs meeting rooms. The decision to not include crosses or signage to the church across the street was important, he said. The word "church" comes with a host of associations and preconceptions, each different depending on the person. He did not want people to place those ideas on the shop.
The Oaks is a gathering place where people can work, study or socialize, and if they want to discuss religion or learn more about Silverdale, they can, Pope said.
Working in the shop is an "embodied religion," Pope said.
By the end of 2021, the Oaks was generating a profit, money that is put into a fund. That was the mission of the business, Pope said. The more popular the business became, the more profits it could generate, the more it could benefit the community.
"If I get to sell things, I get to help people," he said.
Where the money goes
Any dollar of profit at the Oaks - whether that is from a pastry or a smoothie bowl - does not go to the nearby Baptist church.
The church helped get the coffee shop up and running but does not benefit directly from its success, unlike some other coffee shop-church models operated by large churches.
"Let's face it, it's really out of the box," Hernandez said. "It's not ordinary."
Profits from the shop go into a fund directed by leaders of the church. The money is split up and sent to ministries across the area. At the end of 2021, the church split $34,000 between seven groups – Adult & Teen Challenge MidSouth, the Bethlehem Center, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Chattanooga Area, Hope for the Inner City, Tennessee Baptist Children's Home, as well as Mission Increase of Chattanooga and Unidos en Compasión through the Generosity Trust.
Silverdale already had formed a relationship with many of the beneficiaries, having sent volunteers to the groups in the past.
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Chattanooga Area is using the money to help with a faith build project, the construction of a home using workers from churches and religious organizations, president and CEO Jens Christensen said in a phone interview.
Groups like Tennessee Baptist Children's Home and Hope for the Inner City used the funds to help with projects or operations that are otherwise hard to motivate donors. In the nonprofit world, donors generally want their money to go directly to the people served and not to overhead costs like repairs or a new printer, even though those costs help the nonprofits do their work.
Tennessee Baptist Children's Home, which operates three campuses across the state, used funds to buy new furniture, vice president of residential care Patrick Addison said in a phone interview. The children the organization works with are not in state custody and the group does not use government funding, he said.
"Being totally donor-supported, to fulfill our budget, that takes a lot of faith," Addison said. "And we rely on churches and individuals who've supported us for years and new people who never knew about us, but learn about us."
Hope for the Inner City used its donations to fix its building's roof. Churches throughout the area have rallied around the organization, Watkins said. The nonprofit is scheduling contractors to complete the repairs, he said.
"If I can't get my building and roof fixed, we can't do the other work well," Watkins said.
David McNabb, president and CEO of Adult & Teen Challenge MidSouth, said in presenting pitches to Silverdale for the grant money, the Baptist church brought leaders from across the area into the same room. They could see how each organization, despite dealing with a different topic, all worked on healing hurt people, McNabb said.
Just those initial encounters are helping groups explore ways they could work together, he said.
The grant money was generated by a nonprofit business, but simply turning a profit is not how Watkins sees the mission of the Oaks and Silverdale.
"It wasn't a transaction," he said. "It is a relationship."
Contact Wyatt Massey at wmassey@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249. Follow him on Twitter @news4mass.