Curating a coffee community: Local café serves Lynchburg and spreads the Gospel through nonprofit foundation

Known as the “Lynchburg Living Room,” The White Hart café seeks to make a difference in the local community through the Kind Hart Foundation in downtown Lynchburg.

The café, well-known for its “living room-esque” feel, was founded by Ed Hopkins in 2008. Inspired by the oldest standing Irish pub in England, where famous authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien visited, Hopkins created the café to mimic the literary themes of the white stag found in their books.

Seventeen years later, under Myke Barron and business partner Vic Stanley Jr., the coffee shop continues to serve as a “crossroads of culture” for the Lynchburg community. 

Stanley described the café’s “vibe” as a place where people gather with family, introduce new people to the family, cry and laugh and encourage the entire community to be a part of the café.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the café partnered with Lynchburg Community Kitchen to bring meals and hope to local families across the Greater Lynchburg area.

“We were trying to figure out what to do with all the food just sitting in fridges and storage,” Stanley said. “A couple of other people came together and came up with this idea to feed the community, to put together meals and have them distributed throughout the community.”

Together with several churches in the area, the foundation identified people needing food and hope, put together to-go boxes and personally delivered them to individuals.

Throughout this time, the foundation partnered with the Diamond Hill Center and managed packaging and delivering summer lunches for children. 

“A lot of kids, all they get is lunch at school through the free lunch program,” Stanley said. “That’s sometimes the only meal they eat.”

While the foundation is no longer continuing the Lynchburg Community Kitchen this year, the joint partnership of the café and foundation has been helping the community’s local job core.

“We work with several local artists to put on events,” Stanley said. “We live here in Lynchburg; our partner’s kids go to school here; we work here; we go to church here, shop here and eat here, … reaching out to connections so they can facilitate something cool for the community.”

The Kind Hart Foundation, the café’s separate nonprofit organization, was founded by Stanley and his mentor to spread the message of God’s grace and community globally in Nepal and Peru.

While in Peru, Stanley and his team educated youths in soccer academies, trained educators and spread the overall mission of The White Hart café.

“Going overseas was life-changing,” Stanley said. “Experiencing different cultures … (and) the societies that are not your own that are vastly different than yours has forever changed how I see and engage with the world.”

The White Hart café is located at 1208 Main St. in Lynchburg.

Merritt is a feature reporter for the Liberty Champion