Refuge Coffee Co. Midtown

A coffee bar that is also a training programme

Every drink poured at Refuge Coffee Co. Midtown funds the same thing: paid work, training and mentorship for people who have resettled in Atlanta as refugees or immigrants. The nonprofit started in Clarkston, the Georgia town that has taken in resettled families for decades, and it runs its cafés as employment programmes rather than as charity storefronts. A share of every sale goes back into wages and training for the people behind the bar.

That model only works if the coffee stands up on its own, so the Midtown counter is built like a café first: espresso drinks, cold brew, chai and matcha, with a list wide enough that people who do not drink coffee still have a reason to queue.

Inside the Woodruff Arts Center

The Midtown café opened on the Woodruff Arts Center campus in 2021, which puts it between the High Museum of Art and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The crowd follows from that: gallery visitors before a show, symphony audiences afterwards, and people working nearby who come for a table as much as for a drink.

The room is bright and open, and it holds a mix of people reading, working and talking rather than a single type. The arts centre treats it as part of the visit rather than as a concession stand, so it functions as the campus meeting point, which is a different job from the one the original Clarkston café does.

Order the latte, then the cold brew

The latte is the right first order and the fastest way to judge the bar, since a milk drink exposes both the espresso and the hand pulling it. Cold brew is the alternative on a hot Atlanta afternoon, and it travels better across the campus if you are heading into a gallery with it.

Chai latte and matcha cover the non-coffee side properly rather than as an afterthought, and they are the orders to make when you are here for the room and the company instead of the caffeine. Whatever ends up in the cup, the economics stay the same: part of what you pay goes into wages and training for the person who made it, which is the reason the café exists in a building otherwise given over entirely to art.