Coffee shop gives preacher a break

Source: Ypsilanti Press
While some preachers hand out religious tracts, the Rev. Bill Hailes spends his mornings serving up coffee and donuts to the customers who come through his new Fast Break doughnut shop in Ypsilanti.

Fast Break - appropriately named because you can get a warm cup of cappuccino or a chocolate chip muffin without ever leaving your car - opened its drive-thru window on Ellsworth Road a few weeks ago for customers.

“I used to pass this doughnut shop and thought this would be a good business,” says Hailes, the preacher for New Life Baptist Church in Ypsilanti. “I was actually looking for a place to put our church’s daycare center. The real estate agent was showing me pictures of different buildings. Then this building came up.”

Excited, he went to check it out.

“I don’t get paid in my ministry, so I was looking for some kind of job I could do that would fit into our family schedule,” says Hailes. “When I saw this opportunity, I said ‘great!’”

Hailes, a single parent to his 7-year-old twin daughters and 5-year-old son, found the early morning hours perfect for his schedule. “This just kind of worked out in terms of being able to put some quality time in with my children,” he says.

Hailes also brings with him some business savvy. He ran his own medical equipment business in the 1990s and started up New Life Baptist Church, which has grown from the 11 people the first Sunday in 1998, to a congregation of 35.

Although he tries not to push his religious beliefs on his Fast Break customers, he doesn’t hide the fact that he has a strong faith in Christ.

“I’m not shy about that but at the same time I’m not the type of person who tries to press my faith on others,” he says.

“I believe that we as Christians are supposed to get the messages in where we can but it should also fit into the conversation and not be overbearing. Then let Christ do the rest. I’d consider this to be a Christian business.”

Hailes says folks often start talking to him through the drive-thru winde and this often opens the door.

One woman, when she found out he was a Christian, said she was too and offered to do some marketing and advertising work for him free of charge.

Haile’s family was instrumental in helping him get the businesses up and running. His sister, JoAnn Hailes, has especially put in a lot of time, along with his nephews. Since then, Hailes has been able to hire two part-time employees to fill in when he or his sister can’t be there.
Source: Ypsilanti Press