Naldos Coffee Shop: Cwmbran café run by adults with disabilities
“A coffee shop where you can expresso yourself. Serving great coffee by exceptional people.”
“It works on their confidence, money, working the till. It’s all skills that are really important for building confidence. We want people to come and see it. It’s for everybody, and we want everyone to come and enjoy it.”
I don’t normally pay much attention to taglines, but this one at Naldos Coffee Shop at Able in Nant Bran (the former Upper Cwmbran Infants School) has extra meaning.
Naldos is staffed by people with a disability – a new service by Able – who run a variety of projects to support adults with everyday practical skills.
Ellie Mason, senior support worker at Able, said: “They need something that’s a little bit more of a push for them. They just want to find a purpose. They want to have a role and having a coffee shop is kind of like all those skills that we learn in ILS (Independent Living Skills).
“So in our kitchen, we do cooking skills. All those skills that we’ve learnt, we want to put into actual real-life situations, and that’s why we wanted to have the coffee shop.
“It works on their confidence, money, working the till. It’s all skills that are really important for building confidence. We want people to come and see it. It’s for everybody, and we want everyone to come and enjoy it.”
She said they had been helped “massively” by Coffi Kitoko, an independent coffee shop with branches in Cwmbran town centre and Mamhilad Park Estate.
Elli said: “My husband and I go drinking coffee. We started going to Coffee Kitoko when they were their little pod and then when they opened up their shop. They’re all friendly and we got chatting with Denis [one of the co-owners]. We were talking and said we have this vision of teaching our guys how to make coffee.
“He said, ‘I’d love to train you’. So one Sunday I took four of our supported people up to Mamhilad and he and one of his colleagues trained us, showed us all the drinks. It was a really lovely afternoon. It was fab.”
Naldos Coffee is open from Monday to Friday from 9am to 12pm and 1pm to 2.30pm.
📸 Harriet Matthews and James Colbourne who serve drinks and cakes in Naldos Coffee
📸 (left to right) Lily Wright (service manager with Able), Kaitlyn Leighfield (support worker with Able), Harriet Matthews, James Colbourne and Ellie Mason (senior support worker at Able)