Áegis Living’s New Queen Bee Café is Open on Seattle’s Eastside
May 10, 2019
BELLEVUE, WA–Áegis Living opened its newest Queen Bee Café to serve the community of Clyde Hill on the Seattle Eastside. Queen Bee cafés in the Puget Sound area are open to the public and donate all post-operating profits to local charities. The cafés reflect the Aegis Living philosophy of creating gathering places for neighborhoods while giving back to the local community.
“Our cafés are built to nurture human connections over a great cup of coffee, and our belief is these connections will result in social impact big and small,” said Dwayne J. Clark, CEO of Aegis Living. “We combine this philosophy with an unprecedented giving model with 100 percent of net proceeds going to local charities.”
The first charity to benefit from the new Clyde Hill Queen Bee is Bellevue LifeSpring, an organization that has been helping children and families for more than 100 years by providing food, clothing, education and emergency assistance.
The Clyde Hill location is the first Queen Bee café on the Seattle Eastside and the largest of the three cafes in the region. The cafes are well-known for their crumpets baked fresh daily. The first two cafés, located in Seattle on Capitol Hill and in the Queen Anne neighborhood, are built adjacent to Aegis Living communities and are open to both residents and the local community. Proceeds earned from these two cafés have been donated to more than 10 local charities since the opening of the first Queen Bee on Madison Street in 2014.
The location of the new Queen Bee at 8805 Points Drive NE, Clyde Hill, has been home to various businesses since 1926. On a main road for Seattle Eastsiders for decades, this location remains a focal point for the community. Most recently, it was a Tully’s Coffee shop, but long before that it was a convenience store, a fix-it shop, and a few different gas stations. A Richfield gas station located there more than 60 years ago may have been the first to serve coffee that was delivered through a walk-up window.
Just as Aegis Living brings distinctive amenities and hospitality to assisted living communities, the company is excited to bring a welcoming atmosphere with innovative design features to the Queen Bee Clyde Hill location. The Queen Bee has something for everyone. People meeting friends for crumpets and coffee can enjoy on an outdoor patio or sip a glass of wine by a fireplace below a living moss ceiling; chalk-top tables and a children’s play area welcome families. Bicyclists will find bee-embellished bike racks, and dogs are refreshed with water at a sheltered “dog parking” area.
Clark’s admiration for his mother was the inspiration to build a café in her memory. She was a single mother of British roots who provided for her family as a hard-working line cook while giving her son the self-confidence to do anything. He calls her the “original Queen Bee.”
The new Queen Bee café is open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. The menu features freshly baked sweet and savory crumpets, espresso drinks including nitrogen-infused java on tap, milk shakes and frappes, sandwiches, salads, wine and beer.
Áegis Living is a national leader in premium assisted living and memory care. The privately-held company founded in 1997 is headquartered in Bellevue, and operates 31 communities in Washington, California and Nevada.