The Foundery Coffee Pub serves caffeine, connections, community

The Foundery Coffee Pub in Savannah is officially open for business.

More than two years in the making, the downtown Savannah coffee shop, meeting place and church has been serving steaming cups of coffee since Saturday, Nov. 9.

Located in an old furniture store across from Savannah College of Art and Design's Anderson Hall on the corner of Anderson and Habersham streets, The Foundery Coffee Pub offers everything from a quick caffeine fix to locally baked sweet treats to a refuge for those who want to hunker down with a laptop and latte.

The brainchild of Rev. Kevin Veitinger, The Foundery Coffee Pub is supported by the South Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church. More than just another caffeine café, Rev. Veitinger wants The Foundery Coffee Pub to be a place where connections are made, relationships are formed, and lives are changed.

For years he dreamed and planned of a place where downtown Savannah’s diverse community could come together and be supported and cultivated.

“We … came up with the idea of it having four main parts,” he said. “The coffee shop is a huge part of that. It’s certainly the way we plan on paying for the ministry and is the place where we build relationships and meet new people who we’ll be in ministry and connection with.”

The four Cs of the Foundery Coffee Pub – the church, the coffee shop, the conservatory and the community cultivation – come together to minister to those who feel marginalized and disenfranchised by more traditional church settings.

The Foundery church meets weekly, at 7 p.m. on Sunday nights in the coffee pub’s large meeting room. The church strives to offer refuge through love, mercy, and grace in order to seek and be sought by God.

The Foundery Coffee Pub is open seven days a week and serves a traditional menu of high quality, locally roasted coffee.

“It’s some of the best coffee in town,” Rev. Veitinger said. “We pride ourselves on the high quality of the drinks we serve. It’s important to us.”

The Conservatory provides opportunities for visual and performing artists. Local artists display their work and open mic nights allow musicians the opportunity to showcase and share their talents. Rev. Veitinger’s vision for the Community Cultivator component is to find and foster community members’ gifts and graces and connect people to one another.

“In order to reach out to the artist community here in Savannah we knew that we would have to do a very different ministry,” he said.

The Foundery Coffee Pub already has regular customers and groups who use the large meeting room, but needs additional customers and support. With no advertising budget, it’s relying on relationships, great coffee, and word-of-mouth advertising.

“We’re working hard to get the word out that we’re around,” Rev. Veitinger said. “The reception has been great and everyone’s been really excited. We want to be a resource for the community around us and all of the United Methodist connection.”