08/20/2026
๐ฃWe have a big and maybe a little bit of a bittersweet announcement to share with you guys.
We KNOW how sad our community is to see the Food Mart close. Weโre truly sad about it too butโฆthe Food Mart was going to close regardless of anything Irish Den did. Thatโs the bitter part of this announcement. But the sweet part is: We are currently pursuing purchasing the Food Mart building.
If you know anything about us, you know that space is a CONSTANT issue - especially when it comes to anything youth-related. We regularly have over 100 kids packed into Irish Den like actual sardines. ๐
This building would quadruple our space. As we move in this new direction, we will return the land the city of Chapman had gifted us. We want to extend our sincerest thanks to the city for their support.
And the timing of this is kind of crazy, because as many of you know, we were also recently asked to vacate the space we had been renting for Clover Cabinet. So, one of our first priorities is getting Clover Cabinet back up and running as soon as we can. It may take us a minute to figure out the layout and get everything set up, but we are really excited about having a space for it again.
And we have another big announcement: Youth Group is moving to the Food Mart this year! Because we need a couple of weeks to get things ready, Youth Group will officially kick off September 16th with a parent meeting where weโll go over what this year is going to look like.
The dream is for Irish Den (the coffee shop) to eventually make its way over there too. But that is going to take some time.
We know this is a big undertaking. Itโs probably going to be a little crazy. And we definitely donโt have every single detail figured out yet.
But if youโve followed Irish Den for very long, you know that our mission has never really been about coffeeโฆor even about a building. Itโs about people. Itโs about giving kids a place to belong. Itโs about supporting families. And this building could give us so much more room to do that.
Weโll be sharing a lot more soon about the building, our plans, fundraising, renovations, Clover Cabinet, Youth Group, and how you can be involved. But for now, we just want to say thank you. Thank you for supporting Irish Den. Thank you for believing in what weโre doing. Thank you for showing up for these kids and for this community over and over again. We are SO excited to see what God does with this next chapter. Here we go๐