Nelson's offences weren't about drugs. They were about a temper he couldn't control. Two stints in RTC later, he's learning to put it down. Customers don't even know.
Nelson is nineteen. He has been in RTC twice — once for five months on remand and a youth sentence, the second time on a recall for eight more months. The story of both sentences is the same story: a temper that flared faster than his good sense, fights that should never have happened, walls that should have stayed standing.
He came home in May 2024 with a clear goal: become less angry. Not because the system told him to. Because he told himself to.
The first day at the cafe
He'd held jobs before. They had all ended badly — management conflicts, workplace jealousy, colleagues who couldn't get past his record. Then he walked into our cafe and the founder said, plainly, at the start of his shift: “Almost everyone here has been through something. You're not alone. You're not different. You're part of the team.” Nelson said it felt like the first time he could exhale at work.
From that exhale grew something he'd never had on the job before: room to grow.
What he does with difficult customers
Here's the part of Nelson's story that we think every visitor to our cafe should know. The young man behind the bar who is making your flat white — the one with the slightly mischievous grin — used to react with his fists. Now, when a customer is rude, he watches it. He breathes. He chooses something better. And then, often, he ends up making friends with the person.
He'll tell you, with quiet pride, that he doesn't “burst” any more. The temper still exists, he says — he just refuses to give it the wheel. That's not absence of struggle. That is character, in motion.
Where he's heading
Nelson is preparing to enlist in NS. He doesn't intend to stay in F&B long-term. That's fine. The cafe isn't trying to be his career. It is trying to be the place that catches him long enough for him to put the anger down before the army picks him up. We are honoured to be that place.
He has skateboarding for stress relief. He has music. He has a small circle. And he has, against the odds, become the kind of nineteen-year-old we'd trust to mentor the next one through the door.
In the past he would react quickly and physically. Now he chooses not to burst. He takes a calmer, more measured approach. The temper still exists — but he refuses to give it the wheel.— Matt, Founder
Soli Deo Gloria — to God alone be the glory.