Best Day Ever: How a Longmont Crepe Shop Creates Jobs for Adults With Disabilities

At 20, Seth Truitt wanted independence.

“He wants all the same things that any young adult wants to have as they grow up,” said his father, Joe Truitt.

Seth Truitt has Down syndrome. When Seth was 20, his father said, he did not yet have the resources to live independently—and the family could not afford to build him a separate home.

Nearly a decade would pass before Seth’s dream of independence became reality.

After Joe Truitt’s father died, he left the family a small inheritance. Joe drew on his construction experience, secured a permit and—with help from volunteers—built Seth a separate home on the family’s five-acre property east of Firestone.

“We said, ‘It’s now or never,’” Joe Truitt recalled. “‘We’re going to build him this house.’”

The home was completed in about six months with the help of volunteers.

“He’s been in it for six years now,” Joe Truitt said. “He absolutely loves it. It’s changed his life.”

Around the time Seth began living independently, he also started expressing himself more through his artwork. Joe said his son enjoyed drawing cards, writing notes inside them and giving them to people.

Seth’s mother helped turn those drawings into cards they could share and sell. That work inspired the Joy House, an Estes Park gift shop the Truitts opened to showcase products created by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The store eventually featured work from more than 30 artists across the country.

Seth’s next big dream represented another step toward independence: he wanted a place to work.

In his prayer journal, Seth wrote that he wanted a coffee shop where adults with disabilities could work.

“He wrote out a prayer: ‘God, I need a coffee shop. We need this. We want to have a coffee shop where we can work,’” Joe Truitt said.

Joe began exploring the idea, but it took time to find a location the family could realistically afford.

In spring 2025, Calvin Keim met Joe and Seth through the Joy House. Keim was preparing to launch a Special Olympics swimming team, and when Seth said he enjoyed swimming, Keim invited him to join.

The friendship grew from there, and Keim helped Joe prepare the new business for opening.

In April 2025, Best Day Ever Coffee and Crepes opened in the Spoke parking garage off Coffman Street in downtown Longmont.

The shop’s sweet and savory crepe menu was developed through trial and error in Joe’s kitchen during the months leading up to the opening. He and others tested different batters, fillings and recipes before deciding what belonged on the menu.

The mission extends beyond the people working inside the café. Best Day Ever sources many of its ingredients and products from businesses with similar employment missions.

Its coffee beans come from HÆRFEST Coffee Roasting Co., a North Carolina company that creates employment opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities throughout its packaging, roasting, grinding and delivery operations.

Joe brought no conventional restaurant résumé to the project. Before Best Day Ever, he had never worked in a restaurant, coffee shop or even a fast-food business.

For both Joe Truitt and Calvin Keim, the coffee shop became an important source of purpose.

Keim spent 23 years as a licensed medical massage therapist, but he said that work dried up during the COVID-19 pandemic. When he began searching for what should come next, Best Day Ever became part of the answer.

“I kind of asked God, ‘What do you want me to do? What do you need me to do?’” Keim said. “And this came up—needing help in the special-needs community.”

Joe Truitt had already spent much of his career in purpose-driven work. He served in full-time ministry and later worked as a construction superintendent. But he said opening Best Day Ever brought a different sense of calling.

“I’ve been working for 40 years, and not until this last year have I really, truly felt that I was doing what I was meant to do,” Joe Truitt said. “And I’m almost 60.”

Joe was less concerned about his lack of restaurant experience than he was committed to the mission: creating a place where adults with disabilities could find employment and purpose.

“There are thousands and thousands of special-needs people just in our area, and they are looking for employment,” Joe Truitt said. “There’s just not enough employment to be found.”

Today, Best Day Ever employs 16 adults with disabilities, affectionately known inside the café as “besties.” Joe said the name reflects Seth’s tendency to treat people as best friends once they enter his circle.

The besties generally work two- to three-hour shifts spread throughout the café’s operating day—from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 6 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Volunteer job coaches work alongside most of the besties, helping them learn their responsibilities, interact with customers and build workplace skills.

“From the time they started 16 months ago to now, their transformation has been remarkable,” Joe Truitt said. “Their confidence, their courage, their abilities—everything has just gone through the roof.”

Calvin Keim volunteers between 25 and 30 hours a week at Best Day Ever. His son, also named Calvin Keim, works there.

Today, going to work at the café is the highlight of the younger Keim’s day.

“People come in here and talk to me,” he said.

Seth often works the 2-to-4 p.m. shift. He enjoys running the register and greeting customers, but his favorite responsibility is cleaning. He frequently takes charge of cleaning the café’s bathrooms during his shifts.

Best Day Ever has also earned a place in the hearts—and palates—of Longmonsters.

The café earned Platinum honors in eight food-and-drink categories in the 2026 CommunityVotes Longmont contest:

• All Restaurants
• Breakfast Restaurant
• Brunch
• Cafés and Coffee Shops
• Caterers
• Dessert
• Specialty Coffee
• Specialty Foods

It also earned a Bronze award in the Gift Shops category, bringing its total to nine.

Joe does not pretend the original business model was wildly successful. In its early months, Best Day Ever’s revenue was not enough to cover its overhead, in part because the small café employed a much larger staff than a conventional coffee shop would require.

Best Day Ever has since converted to a nonprofit model. Through its “Sponsor a Bestie” program, community members can make monthly donations that help subsidize employee wages and keep the café operating.

“I feel like I am not even touching the hem of the garment on the need with what we’re doing here, but it’s making a difference for these people,” Joe Truitt said.

The Truitts hope to open another shop someday, once they have demonstrated that the Longmont model can sustain itself.

Joe has learned not to discount his son’s ambitions.

“Every time Seth wants something, he gets it usually,” Joe said.