On Monday, June 30th, the Riverview HealthCARE Center opened The Mugg-Z Café inside our facility. The Mugg-Z Café is a facility operated coffee shop for our elders, stakeholders, families, and friends. This was a wonderful day for our facility and one we had been anticipating for some time. Why would we be so excited about a coffee shop? What’s the big deal about a cup of coffee? According to statistics, over 83% of adults in America drink coffee. Over 54% of those drink coffee every day. Nearly 24% of coffee drinkers consume 13 or more cups a week, and the average coffee drinker consumes 3.1 cups of coffee each day. Coffee remains the beverage of choice the world over. It exhilarates, stimulates, and arouses the drinker. A cup of coffee can renew your strength and impart a feeling of calm and comfort. It truly remains one of life’s simplest pleasures.
Sadly, most people perceive a nursing home to be a dreary, lonely, boring place where someone goes to “die”, but nothing can be further from the truth when it comes to this place. This facility not that at all, but rather a place where people come to “live” and continue to do the same things they have always enjoyed doing in their everyday lives. We strive to create an Elder-centered “community” that imbues daily life with spontaneity by creating an environment in which unexpected and unpredictable interactions and happenings can take place. What better way to do this than over a cup of coffee? This is just one of the many ways we endeavor to create this type of environment. At any given time an elder can stroll down their neighborhood and slip into the Mugg-Z Café to experience the comfort a warm cup of coffee brings. They can mingle with friends from this unique community and enjoy the conversations and companionship that is found sitting at the table with coffee in hand. A son can enjoy his evening coffee with his mother.
Here at our facility the excitement of spontaneity is always present in our community. We are more than just a nursing home and more than just a health care center. We are a family, a neighborhood, and a community. Today this community has a new coffee shop, The Mugg-Z Café. Which, by the way is named after our facility dog Mugg-Z, who also offers comfort, companionship, and remains one of life’s simplest pleasures.
PHILLIP RAMEY, Director of Spirituality – Riverview HealthCARE
