Food & Wine

How a café in Greystones is serving up life-changing opportunities

Rise at the Cove is offering men dealing with addiction issues a chance to re-enter the community and develop new skills

The crew of Rise at the Cove: Adam Casserly, Conor Browne, Gavin Murphy, Ryan Mooney and Sean O’Reilly. Picture: Barry Cronin

Phil Thompson is telling me about Rise at the Cove, a social enterprise café which recently opened in Greystones, Co Wicklow

“Addiction is something that removes people from their families, from their jobs, from opportunities, from their homes,” he says.

“And what we’ve seen is that recovery and sobriety give those things back. Some things you have to fight harder for, but in this café, we’ve seen that community is one of the things that ...