Delicious coffee and working together: The inclusive café Senza Limiti

A passion for coffee and love of hospitality fill the air at Café Senza Limiti, located right in the heart of Würzburg's city centre. Upon entering the bright café, you are greeted by smiling faces behind the counter – every day from 7.30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Founder Steven Henze associates this café not only with a place of public gathering, but also with an inclusive workplace where, in principle, everyone has the opportunity to work.
To learn a little more about the origins and Senza as an inclusion café, Steven gave an interview in which he lifted the curtain behind the scenes.  
So what exactly does Senza Limiti mean – as an inclusion café?

"One way to bring people together is Café Senza Limiti!"

History of Origins

The social pedagogue who studied in Würzburg recounts how the idea of such an inclusion café emerged during his studies. Not only did he engage with the concept of inclusion in the university context, but he also spent time accompanying holiday trips for people with disabilities. Engagement with inclusion soon sparked an interest in creating opportunities and perspectives for people with disabilities to lead independent working lives and thus to foster a different approach.

During the holiday trips, which he initially experienced as an accompanying guide, the shared time in cafés was particularly formative. Steven looks back and recounts how they became places where togetherness and joy made the community uniquely special. The groups travelled to Spain and Italy, which inspired him to later bring this flair to Würzburg's city centre.
Steven is familiar with work in the gastronomy sector from his family background and knows how to navigate it naturally.

Through these personal experiences, the concrete idea of an inclusive café ultimately emerged.

Senza Limiti appears to visitors as an ordinary café, but behind the scenes it pursues a very special concept. It creates framework conditions that enable people with disabilities to have a place in the primary labour market. Of course, the question arises: what do such structures actually look like?

Self-determined and independent living is shaped particularly by a fundamental equality of worth. All café staff have standard employment contracts; there is no special recruitment procedure and therefore no preferential treatment or exclusion of people. The concept of inclusion simply means that there is no categorisation of normal or not normal per se. It is about equal treatment for all and thus enables everyone to have largely the same opportunities. The difference lies at most in the provision of support.     

In the work team of Café Senza, you therefore find a heterogeneous group of students, people with or without disabilities, etc. Possible obstacles are overcome as a team. Steven emphasises clearly that inclusion means enabling support to be provided, but not to be assumed.

The standard employment relationships that the café provides mean, as the founder explains, that people who often go unnoticed suddenly have the prospect of shaping their lives according to their own ideas with their own income. Especially in comparison to people with disabilities who work in a sheltered workshop and earn the equivalent of €1.30 to €1.50 per hour there, it becomes clear how much the primary labour market represents an opportunity for people with disabilities. And that shows him the success and the need for this project. 

Lively conversations, noise, friendly faces and overwhelming orders: Working in the café

Although Senza Limiti is adorned with an incredibly cosy and pleasant atmosphere, working in a café in the city centre demands a lot from staff. You have to cope with the speed, sensory overload and general pressure of such a café day-to-day.

"A café is not a workplace for everyone", reports Steven. By this he means that working in the hospitality sector is unsuitable for some people, whether or not they have a disability. Nevertheless, he takes the view that framework conditions are in any case changeable and can be adapted in favour of staff. Fundamentally, he enables a great deal in Café Senza, but is still bound by the fixed structures of a daytime café. In future, other working conditions should be created to allow for broader inclusion possibilities, as Steven reveals to us at the end.

The founder gives us a few examples that illustrate how important sensitivity and understanding are in working with people and especially in such an inclusion project.

"There was once a person, for example, who was very anxious and withdrawn, but who had the dream of working in the café. She then did a shift, after which we talked. In the end, she herself said that it was too hectic here and too much distraction and so on.", Steven recounts. 

Another member of staff could not cope well with the transition from summer to winter, when the windows and doors suddenly close and café life gathers indoors. Steven speaks about these experiences in a very understanding and attentive tone. The passion for working with people comes through very clearly in the conversations, which probably acts as a driving force.

In the understanding of most businesses, consideration for inclusive framework conditions is often perceived as too great a burden. This is associated rather with worse competitive opportunities and thus economic loss, instead of the mutual benefits of interpersonal care for one another. Before even engaging with the challenges and possible state support, some institutions reject considering such a thing at all. 

However, the café shows the exact opposite. Inclusion does not automatically mean economic loss. Some state funding specifically supports such projects, and so it ultimately comes down to a lack of own initiative and foresight for the need for such models. Steven also explains to us the extent to which he can manage to have two people at the counter instead of, for example, just one person. For people with disabilities, he applies for what is known as a wage cost subsidy of up to 75% of gross wages, which then enables him to pay all his staff a normal salary. Steven also speaks about the fact that there is awareness of the necessity of such projects, but it is fundamentally overlooked in the view of the general public.

The café's motto – "Inconspicuously Conspicuous"

As Café Senza shows, what is particularly important is: maintaining the balance between attention and visibility to the outside world and not turning the pursuit of inclusion into a "special" situation. It should eliminate the difference and make it something shared. The motto "inconspicuously conspicuous" sums up this idea perfectly.

The team spirit also reflects this sense of togetherness and mutual care. When asked whether the café has to deal with many prejudices from uninformed visitors, Steven asserts: "That doesn't happen. I don't notice any prejudices, but I think that's also because we do it really well as a team, so it doesn't stand out at all. In the background you can tell that there are simply differences. You often have to polish things up, for example, because some people in the team can't do that so well and don't have an eye for it either. You have to support each other fully. It's one thing what you see here at the front. But in the background, a lot happens within the team with mutual support and help. So that it's as much a normal operation as possible here."

After years of experience – What has café life already taught and what does the future of the café look like?

"At the beginning, everything was a complete mess". This is how Steven begins to talk about his learnings from four years of running a café. On the one hand, he was a trained social pedagogue, on the other hand he lacked his own experience in an inclusion business and a role model in the form of an existing inclusion café. He told us how his approach to his staff became more realistic and pragmatic. He abandoned the idea that every person can be used well in every area and learned to focus even more on the individual abilities and needs of people. Steven emphasised that it had to work well for both sides and provide added value.

"There are situations where you have to have a conversation again after a few weeks. 'Look, I've observed this situation now, you simply need to provide more support, even if it's perhaps one more step.' I always try to clarify that. […] You give everyone a certain amount of time to settle in."

One experience for Steven was that he needed a larger team to have some free time himself. "I realised we had too few staff when I couldn't get out of here myself anymore". The café started with 16 employees and doubled this number in recent years. Currently, 32 staff are employed, of which approximately 40 to 45 per cent of people have a disability. The shift length was also adapted to the needs of staff. The team works in a two-shift system with a varying shift length of five to eight hours. This ensures that everyone is deployed according to their capabilities.

Furthermore, his attitude towards structures and clear procedures changed considerably. At the beginning, the founder relied on flat hierarchies, few fixed structured procedures and decisions made jointly by the team. In this way, he thought, he would grant everyone the greatest possible freedom of movement and corresponding opportunities for development. However, within the first two years, he realised that clear structure, direct instructions and regulated procedures were more conducive to success in working together. Steven also moved away from the idea of involving his team in all decisions concerning the café, as he found that it was easier for many of his staff if he set the direction. With the experience gathered, Steven later abandoned a democratic approach to decision-making. On the whole, this demanded more from his team than it promoted a different feeling of togetherness.

Steven reports to us, alongside pleasant experiences of working together, also unpleasant experiences with café visitors: "There are also people who come here and ask: 'Who is the person with a disability then?'" "I never point to anyone, I say that some work here or tell them the number" Such inappropriate comments reach him from time to time, but he tries to deal with them quite factually so as not to give the whole thing much space. On the other hand, he receives a lot of support for his project, also from other companies. Many visitors and other outsiders express their joy that Senza Limiti exists in this form.

Particularly beautiful moments for Steven are those in which staff members, with or without disabilities, really flourish. Even though such situations occasionally get lost in the daily stress, Steven knows that many people with disabilities rarely experience such moments. Especially at the beginning of their work in the café, many people with disabilities are initially uncertain, often because it is their first job. However, Steven describes how they gain confidence over time and increasingly develop self-confidence. The team community contributes significantly to this. The café's climate also creates a lively sense of togetherness and, in a certain sense, friendships within the team. 

Steven is also aware that his own capacities are limited. His focus is therefore on the further development of the café. From time to time, he engages in motivating other companies and interested people for inclusion projects by reporting his own experiences in personal conversations and in the context of lectures. Additionally, the team operates a small Ape with an integrated coffee bar, which is used at selected festivals and makes the project visible beyond the café.

His wish for the future is to continue Senza Limiti, which clearly shows that his original idea is working. It inspires him for further projects, which are already in planning, about which he remains somewhat guarded. Nevertheless, he reports his great motivation for implementing further inclusion projects. He wants to open another business that enables different working conditions than those in a well-visited café with an open kitchen. There, the idea of Senza Limiti is taken further and the possibility for people with disabilities to work in the primary labour market. This is also part of his greatest personal drive: the fundamental need for jobs in the primary labour market for people with disabilities. And beyond that, to offer a place that brings people together according to the name of the café – Senza Limiti – without limits.