July 12, 2024

Nineteen Brandon residents will greet the public for the first time Tuesday when a new nonprofit drink and snack shop opens in Brandon.

Buddies & Co. was envisioned about 18 months ago as a business to employ people of all abilities, said board member Carin Griffith, whose 20-year-old daughter, Rylee, will be on the staff along with others who call Brandon their home.

Its mission statement describes it as “a place where people with disabilities are valued, find meaningful work and connect with the community they love.”

Joining Griffith on the board are fellow parents Krista Halseth and Kristin Knutson and special education instructors Sarah Andera and Victoria Orren, both with the Brandon Valley School District. Halseth’s daughter, Anna, 24, and Knutson’s 20-year-old son, Andrew, also will work at Buddies & Co.

“They are just as passionate about it as I am,” Griffith said of the other mothers on the board. “Each one of us has young adults with a little bit different need. They (Andera and Orren) have a knowledge of the community, and some of the kids at Buddies & Co. they’ve had in class throughout their high school years.”

Since March, renovation work has taken place in the snack shop building, a former casino at 1309 E. Cedar St., just east of First Interstate Bank. More than $75,000 was raised to support the founding of Buddies & Co.

“We have had a lot of great community support to get our place up and going,” Griffith said. “As a nonprofit, we started at zero, and our community lifted us up to get us going. They supported us financially and donated labor and supplies.”

The nonprofit will provide opportunities for young adults who currently range in age from 16 to 35. For some of the staff, this will be their only employment; for others, it’s a chance to expand their work talents.

For Rylee Griffith and Andrew Knutson, this will be their only job. For Anna Halseth, who works at a day care center in Brandon, it’s a chance to pick up additional hours—and to hang out with friends she has known for years.

During Buddies & Co.’s soft openings, to prepare the staff for making the menu, Rylee has asked to join her friends during their shifts.

“It just goes to show the social aspect of what our community offers,” Griffith said. “The opportunity to have Buddies & Co. in Brandon isn’t just to give kids with disabilities a place to learn job skills. It’s a place to hang out and feel included.”

Buddies & Co. will give the young adults job skills, independence and a sense of community, she said.

The idea for Buddies & Co. came about when the three mothers were talking about opportunities for their children after their graduation from Brandon Valley High School.

“We have a great group of moms in the Brandon community that have become friends over the years and seen our kids meet challenges,” Griffith said. “We were talking about what it would look like when they turned 21, and three of us moms started to chat about too bad there isn’t something here in Brandon, the community they grew up in.”

If it didn’t exist, they should create it, decided the women, who all have education and speech therapy backgrounds. They looked at different business models in other states and settled on the snack shop.

Next week, two soft openings will welcome the public to Buddies & Co. The first is Tuesday, and the second is Thursday. The hours for both will be 5 to 8 p.m.

The menu will include coffee, cold-brew coffee, smoothies, Italian sodas, Lotus energy drinks and blended drinks in flavors such as frozen hot chocolate and cotton candy. Snacks will include grab-and-go items for families, Griffith said.

Buddies & Co. has partnered with Flyboy Donuts. It also will serve as a pickup location for online orders from the doughnut shop.

In addition, Buddies & Co. will offer Family Treats Homemade Ice Cream, produced by a Brandon family who doesn’t operate a brick-and-mortar store but provides ice cream to the Denny Sanford Premier Center, Howard Wood Field and other special locations.

The official opening day is July 24. Hours will be 7 to 11 a.m. and 4 to 8 p.m. Because Buddies & Co. currently does not have lunch offerings, it won’t be open during the noon hour at the beginning. However, the staff will take suggestions for items that can be added to the menu, such as acai bowls and protein bowls that easily can be made in-house, Griffith said.

Expansion will depend on continued support, she said.

“We’re hoping that after the newlywed phase of us opening, people will continue to remember and support us,” she said. “Getting any business off the ground is difficult, and we have the usual new-business worries. We hope people will support our mission and employees.”