Give back a little with every sip!

When you sign up for our Water Street Loyalty Rewards, you earn three rewards points for every dollar you spend at any of our Café locations. These points can be redeemed for discounts, OR you can choose to donate a portion directly to our quarterly Featured Charity. With your help, we raised $945 for Can-Do Kitchen, our first Featured Charity of 2019.

Can-Do Kitchen helps food entrepreneurs on their journey

When Water Street opened in 1993, our owner, Mark Smutek, was the only employee for months. He did everything himself and learned along the way. He knows the daily struggles and triumphs of being an entrepreneur in the food industry.

Can-Do Kitchen is supporting many new food entrepreneurs through these struggles and helping to take some of the stress out of the process of starting a new business. Since 2008, they have been providing commercial kitchen space, food business incubation and workshops to entrepreneurs.

"We're here to collaborate with food entrepreneurs in creating businesses that will have long-lasting positive impacts on families and the community overall," shared Lucy Dilley, Executive Director of Can-Do Kitchen.

Can-Do helps layout a roadmap and supports entrepreneurs in developing reasonable goals. With their understanding of the regulations entrepreneurs will face, they are there to provide support along the way. Can-Do Camp, startup support meetings, resource guides, connections in the industry, food safety guidance – this is how they support food entrepreneurs in our community.

Lucy added, "Our commercial kitchen and our incubation services go hand-in-hand when it comes to supporting food businesses."

Water Street is extremely happy to support the amazing work of Can-Do Kitchen and hopes you can help us in this effort.

Supporting Non-profits throughout the Kalamazoo county area

The program began in 2018 and with the help of our customers we were able to raise $1,196 to donate to Bronson Children's Hospital. Check out our Giving page to learn how your organization can apply to be considered as our next Loyalty Rewards recipient.