Assembly Coffee
Ask Molly Hawkins what her favorite quote is, and unsurprisingly she’ll reference the notebook by her side that is full of them. After a moment she decides.
“Act is the blossom of thought; and joy and suffering are its fruits.”– James Allen
The fruit of the coffee flower’s blossom is called a coffee cherry. Harvest that tiny seed and follow it on a long and complicated journey, and you might find yourself inBallard, Washington, sipping the beverage that we Pacific Northwesterners know and love so well at a place called Assembly Coffee.
However, Assembly is much more than a coffee shop. The goal of Assembly is to bring connection and community into a physical space. “Coffee shops are an opportunity to feed off of energy and connect with folks,” says Assembly ownerMolly Hawkins. “I wanted to create anew coffee-shop-like space that actually encourages those to come and stay or have a home away from home.
You can hear the excitement and enthusiasm in Molly’s voice when you ask her about the concepts and ideas that shaped Assembly Coffee. The seeds she planted years ago sprouted from her creative marketing agency, We AreUnicorns, but now Molly watches on as these ideas bloom into a space for creatives to gather, collaborate, and build community
"I wanted this to be a canvas for anybody that has an idea,” she says. “I have always loved facilitating. I like bringing things to life and watching people enjoy those things. Feeding off their energy and their highs. Seeing them thriving and succeeding in the moment."
Molly opened Assembly in October 2021 as a gallery and event space. But shortly after, she started serving coffee and created a gathering space. In the past year since they opened, Assembly has acted on their ideas and created an accommodating space for creatives to share their work by hosting monthly creative events and featuring local creatives like Shogo Ota, Darcie Gray, and Ariel Parrow.
In addition to providing a canvas where creatives can show off their work, Assembly hosts retail pop-up events and offers a selection of curated plants. And because coffee is at the center of this gathering space, Assembly has Olympia Coffee Roasters as their house partner and plans to announce their first rotating guest roaster in the coming months.
Assembly offers a safe haven that is welcoming to everyone. All who gather here, regardless of their background, can feel the infectious energy cultivated in this special place of creativity and collaboration. “There’s a wild intersection here of different people from different backgrounds that are all equally excited to share and to support other people who are doing something or building something,” she says. “It’s all about the shared enthusiasm for creators in Seattle.”
Often art galleries or traditional creative spaces have a hand in deciding how and where creatives display their work, but Molly says she takes a “you-tell-me”approach when working with creative people, which she says is often a welcome surprise to those that come to Assembly.
“I think they’re caught off guard,” she says. “But I want to facilitate and enable them to do things that are fun and memorable. If you want to paint the walls, do some window decals, or put bark chips on the floor to create an experience, let’s do it.”
Nurturing connections and cultivating a space for ideas is something that Assembly does well. But what makes this creative gathering space special is Molly’s approach. Assembly is there to support and promote the creative community of Seattle. Molly says she wants to help provide an opportunity and then let the creatives do their thing.
“I’m a connector, an enabler. I like to make those connections, step out of the way, and then watch that magic unlock when people figure it out for themselves,” she says. “I love doing that.”
Molly Hawkins and Assembly Coffee are bringing something unique to the creative scene in Ballard, and in the name of stewardship, they are handing their creation to those who help make our city and culture unique, vibrant, and intriguing. But there are still ideas and seeds left to sprout from the creative scene in our city and beyond, and if Assembly continues to foster connection and promote collaboration, they will give these ideas plenty of room to grow, blossom, and fruit in the future.
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