Jan. 26, 2026, 4:45 a.m. CT
At the Monday evening, Jan. 19 meeting of the Amarillo ISD board, the Special Education Department, headed by Kelly Morrison, spoke about a partnership formed with Palace Coffee Company to help train special education students for jobs to make them accountable, hirable and confident.
Palace Coffee Company is owned by Patrick Burns and his wife, Krystal. “It has been going for 15 years now,” said Burns. “We like to support nonprofits and create good energy for the community.” The company’s mission statement is “Be Kind,” and Burns said that they try to live up to it.
Burns said the Amarillo AISD Special Education group reached out to him to assist them in getting a grant for a coffee cart and knew that he had helped Advo’s Hope Village in their pursuit of teaching special education kids and adults a viable trade and career. “We helped them get their coffee machine and equipment,” Burns said. “We knew it needed to be commercial grade equipment to present our coffee well.”
According to Jessica Hathaway, AISD coordinator of the Special Education Department, the Centers for Disability gave them a $10,000 grant to start a work-based learning program with a Unified Blend, which will be a coffee cart, and will show up at different locations making espresso and other coffee drinks, once their equipment is purchased.
“We’re going to show at different places and make espressos, and once we get all our equipment purchased, Palace Coffee has been kind enough to join us with doing all the training,” Hathaway said.
Burns said that coffee from the Hope Village coffee shop is now being featured at a coffee bar at AmTech. “It’s cool to see that all happen,” he said. The coffee entrepreneur said that they furnish coffee for several coffee shops in the Wichita Falls area. “There’s some specific coffee shops across the nation that focus on being nonprofit and serving the community.”
Burns said that he is friends with Tim Herbel, who started “Not Your Average Joe” in Oklahoma City, which he believes is a nonprofit coffee house with 8 to 12 shops that have a buddy program, and they are doing a great job.
“I actually went to a roasting school to learn how to roast the coffee, and Tim was in the class,” he said.
Burns said that on Jan. 29, they have invited all their former baristas to come out and hang with them at the Sad Monkey Mercantile outside Palo Duro Canyon.
“There’s a documentary series by N&D Media that is coming in next week to shoot for a video called ‘Coffee – the Universal Language.'” Burns said that season one was already out on Amazon and PBS and that it was the same group that produced “Chef’s Table” on Netflix.
Though the AISD project is in its infancy, Burns plans to watch it grow, as his coffee shops and use of Palace Coffee in other coffee houses have grown, from the first one in Canyon to several now in Amarillo.
