Echo Life Church turned a run-down strip mall into a source of hope. Now, a cafe is coming

The desolate, nearly 5-acre Highland Terrace shopping center at the intersection of Davis Highway and Fairfield Drive was considered a waste of space when Ellen Dunham-Jones, an expert on suburban redevelopment, addressed it at a CivicCon event in October 2021.

Today, it’s a thriving church, childcare center and place of commerce for predominately minority and women-owned businesses. Come this summer, it will also be home to a community café where the proceeds will be poured back into community outreach.

Echo Life Church lead pastors and spouses Joe and Suzannah Driver saw the bigger picture for the former strip mall back in 2019 – as a catalyst of change for a historically underserved community.

“We were just so excited because of the opportunity for this location – underserved area, really under resourced in a lot of ways and we felt like, ‘Man, we could really turn the lights back on here and bring light into our city,'” Joe Driver said.

Over 100,000 cars pass the now modernized church each day, and the exit spills right into the church parking lot, Driver said.

“It's also right at the socio-economic divide. So, we feel like this is a corner that Jesus would hang out here himself,” Driver said. “So, we started the renovation project with always this idea that we're not building a church building just for Sunday mornings, that we wanted it to be meaningful and purposeful for our community every day, and we've done that in a few ways already.”

The strip, which Echo Life owns the entirety of, now houses 16 local businesses, up from six when they started. After asking about the needs of their community, they discovered that quality, affordable childcare was a hindrance for many families. The church launched Echo Learning Academy in August, now serving 75 children. Several of them are on scholarships offered to those marginalized in the community.

They also regularly partner with neighboring organizations, like O.J. Semmes Elementary School.

“We partner with them with their needs, and with the navigator program with the school. We sponsored the food for a big gathering (when) they had lunch at the school. We support their teachers in a lot of ways. At Easter, we did a big Easter egg hunt, we had a snow cone machine there, bounce houses,” Driver said.

“We feel like that's the closest one (school) to us right in our backyard. A lot of those kids come to church. So, we want to help them any way we can to help turn the tide there,” Driver said.

The coffee shop, which will soon be referred to as Echo Coffee Co., has always been part of the church’s initial blueprint, but it took time to find the right people to take the lead. Years later they found Mason and Melanee Singer, who will be spearheading the new coffee shop’s recipes, service and design.

While the coffee is intended to be top-quality, the proceeds will go toward supporting local inner-city organizations on a rotating basis.

“The big marquee is being able to write a check and highlight to various partners,” Driver said. “Pensacola Dream Center, Feeding the Gulf Coast, Family Promise, United Ministries - these partnerships are doing great inner-city work to be able to come alongside them more than what we're already doing, and have another avenue to really multiply our efforts in helping those organizations.”

He believes that regardless of religious background, helping to improve the city by purchasing a cup of coffee is something that the community will support.

“The idea behind the cafe, the tagline is, ‘enjoy a sip, make a splash.’ That really captures our heart that we want good quality coffee that people can enjoy and appreciate, but also at the same time, knowing that when you purchase coffee from here, it's going to make a difference,” Driver said.

“We feel like people love coffee and people love to make a difference and do good, no matter your faith background. So that's common ground for us, and that's something we can all get behind,” he added.

Echo Coffee Co. hopes to make a splash

Mason Singer, who now works full-time for the U.S. Navy, was an entrepreneur in the beginnings of the Los Angeles coffee cart boom in 2017. Owner of only the third coffee cart to enter the LA area, interest picked up quickly due to his mobile cart’s aesthetics and locally roasted beans.

“It started to gain a lot of notoriety with some really interesting clients,” Singer said. “We’re talking about getting hired by the Ritz Carlton, the Los Angeles Yacht Club, Jason Mraz.”

Even while his business was taking off, he eventually enlisted in the military and left his coffee cart career on the shelf with an “inkling of hope” of one day starting a coffee business back up again.

“Mel and I have always talked about wanting to go to a coffee shop, that's something that we thought, ‘Man, that would just be brilliant, wouldn't it?’ I mean, we could just live a simple life, have a coffee shop, we can treat people well, serve great coffee, and just that's something I enjoy. I enjoy that atmosphere, I want to create it for people,” Singer said. “Then we got here, came to the church. They have a literal cafe waiting that was built, waiting for somebody to come in. And I just thought, ‘Man, God. That's something.’”

The Singers will be sourcing their pastries from Dropout Bakery & Company out of Mobile, Alabama, to supply them with expertly crafted pastries, while they will be handling the hand-crafted coffees.

Right now, the shop has only been open on Sunday mornings since Easter and is run by the Singers and volunteers. However, they hope to be operating throughout the week with a paid staff this summer.

While they have the classic cortados and lattes so ornate you will want to keep the lid off to stare at the foam swirls on the surface, they will also be exploring unique flavor profiles difficult to find in the Pensacola area.

“Sundays are a day where we serve a very limited menu. But when the café open seven days a week, we want to start bringing on stuff that really kind of breaks the mold, trying products that really no one else is trying,” Singer said. “We're open to try new things and serving the best quality products we can.”

Singer hopes to offer some of the best coffee in the area.

“When they get to our coffee shop and realize the pastries are out of this world, the coffee is really good, it starts to bring them into a new dimension of what they thought was possible with church coffee,” Singer said.

For more updates and information, follow Echo Life Church on social media.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Echo Life Church to add Pensacola community coffee shop this summer