REBUILD
MORE THAN A CAFÉ
Food security, employments skills, and social enterprise The Broom Tree Café was always about more than what we served.For 5½ years, the Broom Tree Café operated as a social enterprise of The Broom Tree Foundation in the heart of downtown Lacombe. It created opportunities for employment experience, supported food security initiatives, generated revenue for the Foundation, and gave our community a welcoming place to gather and connect.
While the physical café closed its doors in September 2026, much of what grew from it continues. The relationships, programs and lessons built through the café remain an important part of how The Broom Tree Foundation serves our community today.
Work experience can be an important part of building confidence, independence and opportunity.
The Broom Tree Café was created in part to provide a supportive place for women connected with the Foundation and its programs to gain practical work experience and develop skills that could help them move forward.
From cooking and baking to cleaning, customer service, barista skills and café operations, there were opportunities to learn, contribute and grow within an environment designed to meet people where they were at.
BUILDING EMPLOYMENT SKILLS
FOCUSING ON SUSTAINABILITY
The Broom Tree Café operated as a social enterprise, using business as a tool to create positive change in our community.
Unlike a traditional business where generating profit is the primary goal, a social enterprise generates revenue while working toward a greater social purpose.
Revenue from the Broom Tree Café was reinvested into The Broom Tree Foundation and its work. This meant something as simple as grabbing a coffee, ordering lunch or picking up a Love Muffin gave our community another way to support women and families in Lacombe.
Growing Our Food Security Initiatives
Food has always had a way of bringing people together, but through the café, it also became another way for us to respond to a very practical need in our community.
Food security initiatives developed through the Broom Tree Café have helped us provide healthy, home-cooked food to individuals and families who need additional support.
One of those initiatives is our Broom Tree Table Meal Program, which continues today. Through BT Table, members of our community can order home-cooked family meals while helping The Broom Tree Foundation continue its efforts to address food insecurity locally.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
In September 2026, after 5½ years of serving our community in downtown Lacombe, the physical Broom Tree Café closed its doors. It marked the end of an important chapter, but not the end of the work that began there.
The café helped us learn, grow, build relationships and discover new ways of meeting needs within our community. Today, we're carrying those lessons forward as The Broom Tree Foundation continues to grow its housing, food security, outreach and community support initiatives.
The way this work looks may continue to change, but the purpose behind it remains the same: providing refuge, creating opportunities for restoration and helping women and families rebuild.
Want to hear the full story?
There is much more to the Broom Tree Café story than we could fit on this page.
In Refuge, Restore, Rebuild: A Broom Tree Podcast, we share more about the journey of the café, the decision to close the physical location and what this next chapter looks like for The Broom Tree Foundation.
The Work ContinuesThe Broom Tree Café will always be an important part of our story, and we're incredibly grateful to every customer, volunteer, staff member, donor, partner and community member who helped make those 5½ years possible.
What was built there continues through the programs, relationships and community that grew around it.