"She calls this place her coffee shop," a customer said of her young daughter who was maybe 2 or 3.

"It is her coffee shop," Mrs. Alicia replied.

And it is. Queen Bee is her coffee shop and my coffee shop and your coffee shop -- it is a place for everyone to feel welcome and happy and safe. It is a place of peace and joy and laughter. It's for reconnecting and meeting new people -- strangers become friends in a matter of seconds over talking about their favorite blend or the music or the food, or even just the time spent at tables next to each other reading for hours. There is a camaraderie in the customers that come regularly, a sort of knowledge that says, "Ah, I see. You’ve discovered it too." It's a place to slow down and breathe, a place for friends to meet and do life together, tears and giggles and all. People say that seeing someone reading a book you love is like seeing a book recommend a person — well, meeting a stranger at Queen Bee is like seeing a coffee shop recommend a person.

"We've always wanted to work for ourselves, but I think mainly our first idea was that we wanted something that put us in our community and took Micah out of corporate America. We felt like if you're going to pour yourself into something, do something that you believe in that has eternal consequences, or eternal benefits, not just a paycheck. And I would say it's kind of changed a little bit since we've opened. That still is the end goal, but I think once we got in and we saw the people we were going to be able to come in contact with, and how we could affect their lives, I think we began to see just how desperate people are for kindness and for just being known. Our world has gotten so big and so busy, and so private in a lot of ways, that people enjoy a personal touch."

"We have been able to serve people from a ministry standpoint, but not from within a church. Our goal is to earn the right to speak to people about why we do what we do. We don't plaster Jesus across our walls, but we hope that by creating relationships with people they'll one day ask 'Why do you do this?'"

"A lot of it too, has to do with our kids. There are a lot of people in our generation that are stuck in jobs that they hate, and they spend the majority of their time doing things that they don't love. We wanted to break that cycle for our kids; we wanted them to not just choose from careers that they new about but we wanted them to search their souls for what drives them to get up in the morning. To find what they could see themselves doing every day and loving it. By doing it, by us finding that and pursuing that, I think it validated that a little more. It wasn't just words, it was action too."

"I didn't anticipate making an impact on people. I knew that we had good coffee. I knew that we could offer them that and that was something that they couldn't get in McDonough before. But I didn't know that people would come here and that this would be a part of their every day or weekly routine. We have families that come on Saturday mornings and have come every single week unless they're on vacation. And now the families are starting to interact with each other. Before, they were coming to get their breakfast, but now they're coming to meet their community. It still blows our minds that people come here and ask for the Panama Joe— a drink that we made up, people know by name and come in and ask for. It still blows my mind every time I make it."

"The the things that have been placed on your heart are there for a reason. God does care about the things that are important to us and He will use whatever we love. Serving Him doesn't have to be a burden or a chore; He'll use where we are with what we love to do what He wants to accomplish. And I'm so grateful that He'll let us do that. His faithfulness has been unbelievable, and He's faithful whether I believe Him or not. But He's allowed us to see it, and that changes everything."

"We're in awe. We're just very grateful to get to do what we do. Our shop feels like a neutral ground for a lot of different people. There have been staff meetings, Bible studies, people that have met from online dating here — I hope that people do feel that. That this is a safe place; that we want it to feel like home. We always said when we were dreaming of it that we wanted it to feel like going to your Grandma's house. There was never going to be anything fancy here, but you were always welcome and you could bring people with you, and you could take your shoes off. You were just going to feel loved on when you left. And we hope that's what people feel when we come here."

"It's real. It's about more than a dollar— we aren't doing this to get rich and retire. Nothing about this is fast and hurried, and I think people appreciate that. I think as a whole we as people long for slower days, when you had time to make relationships and to get to know people. So we do, really try hard to do that."

"We believe with everything in us that this is what God gave us to do. I think the heart of His ministry was service, and I think that's the heart of ours too. We're grateful that we get to do this, and we do want to just point people to Him."