After closing earlier this year, downtown Peterborough café Dreams of Beans recently reopened under new ownership.

New owners Aurynn Jacobs Parkin and Andrew MacGregor were already interested in opening a business together when they were approached by the previous owner of the café.

Though the new owners are passionate about preserving the original feel of Dreams of Beans, they do have some changes in mind. One of which, upon launching their social media pages, was listing Dreams of Beans as a "Social Enterprise Café."

"A social enterprise is a collaboration of work that puts the social values first,’ said MacGregor.

Another change they are implementing is the removal of tipping and substituting it with the promise of providing a living wage of $25/hour to their employees. This starting wage is higher than the living wage of $19.05, the number reported to be the living wage for the average working adult in the Living Wage Report released by United Way Peterborough in November 2022.

Dreams of Beans existed under the same name for the majority of its time since opening in 2001 until it underwent a rebranding to "Dreams Café and Bistro" in recent years. The decision to return to the original name was one of the first decisions the new business owners made together.

"We settled on going back to the original name because that’s kind of the space that we want to provide – what they were originally going for," said Jacobs Parkin.

Dreams of Beans reopened on May 17.

Listen to the story below: