The Parvin Group
Audio By Carbonatix
It was a seat warmer on a cold icy night several years ago that led Chris Parvin to become a different kind of coffee shop owner. He was driving home after a day spent in court for his primary job as a lawyer.
“I’m in my Mercedes, and I’ve got my butt heater on, and I’ve got my steering wheel heater on, and I’m just toasty-roasty feeling pretty good,” Parvin says.
It was raining and with temperatures sinking below freezing, the city would soon be covered in a thin sheet of ice. Traffic bottlenecked under a bridge near downtown, and Parvin had just enough time to catch a man collecting some stuff and crawling into a little nook at the top of the bridge.
“Here I am driving at night, and I’m going to my big warm house where I’ve got this meal waiting for me. And a family. And I’m healthy. And I thought, I’ve got to do something,” Parvin says.
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At the time, he had several White Rhino Coffee shops – after opening the first one in Cedar Hill in 2007 – where he’d hoped to bring people together. “Coffee is good. I love coffee,” Parvin says. “And food is good. I love food. But, we’re really in the people business.”
On that cold icy night, he called a friend who had a big mobile kitchen and had previously provided large meals to communities in need. Parvin asked him bluntly what he could do with $25,000. Specifically, could they figure out how to do a big Christmas dinner for homeless people around Dallas.
“That became the 17 Days of Christmas because that was exactly what we could afford to do. We deployed these mobile kitchens to four or five locations around Dallas and Forth Worth – at homeless population centers – and we had volunteer chefs out there and cooked meals,” he says.
That’s when Parvin began to understand more about the local homeless community. He sat and ate at these meals and began to glean some insight into how people in his position can help. Parvin says there are no big ah-ha moments, but rather a modicum of understanding.
“I remember sitting down with a guy one night and this guy was just lapping up the food and I said, ‘Hey do you want me to get you seconds?’ and he said, ‘You know I just haven’t had fresh vegetables in like a year. When you’re homeless you eat fast food, you eat stuff people hand you, you eat out of trash cans, but you don’t eat fresh vegetables,'” Parvin says.
That conversation inspired Parvin to help the homeless population even more. He and his organization, The Parvin Group, began to try to research nonprofit organizations to partner with, leaning on those who had better experience, tools and insights.
OurCalling was one of the businesses they landed on.
“We linked up with OurCalling about a week before Snowmageddon last year,” Parvin remembers. “The giving committee presented to me a recommendation to give them some type of donation. And I loved what I saw.”
They met with the founder, Wayne Walker, and donated $50,000. Patrick Palmer at OurCalling estimates there are more than 10,000 homeless in Dallas on any given night, including shelters, “It’s an estimate, as no one actually knows the number. We will see about 20,000 people in a year, Parkland will see about 10,000 and the Bridge homeless shelter will see about 10,000 unique people.”
Now during the winter, White Rhino Coffee shops set out boxes to collect coats, gloves, hats and socks several days before temperatures are forecasted to fall below freezing. Prior to an early-February cold snap this year, White Rhino kicked off the dive with $1,500 in new jackets.
“The boxes fill up daily,” chief marketing officer at The Parvin Group Mary O’Connor says, “Our Calling comes and empties them. So, we’re not sure exactly how many we get.”
They say that sweaters, socks, gloves, hats and anything that helps wearers to stay warm is needed and accepted.
Parvin says their next mission is to look into mobile kitchens with the hopes of connecting more people with full, hot meals.
Tip cups at a White Rhino.
Lauren Drewes Daniels
Other than their mission work, as their coffee shops expand across North Texas (there are seven shops now with another scheduled to open in Midlothian this year) Parvin wants White Rhino still to be a place where people can connect. As often as they can, they remodel old homes to give their stores an at-home feeling.
“Even if they have a home and warm bed, there are so many people that don’t have a tribe. They don’t have people to talk to. They have a hard time getting to know people,” Parvin says. “So as we expand it’s not about how can we got out to make a billion dollars, but for me, it’s about how can we truly create a sense of community where people feel like they have friends.”
