What do a cafe, a WWE Wrestler and Beaufort SC all have in common? A new coffee shop & cafe is opening next week in Beaufort, and this one provides a pick-me-up from more than just the coffee drinks and dining options it plans to serve.
Sunny Summers Cafe plans to host its grand opening on August, 21st at 11:30am at its location in the Beaufort Plaza Shopping Center, 7 Robert Smalls Parkway.
Inside the new cafe, the creation of former WWE wrestler Macey Estrella, aka Lacey Evans, and her family, you can’t help but to be in a happy mood as soon as the door closes behind you because the new spot will be serving up smiles along with plenty of food and drink options.
Included in the brightly colored space are numerous selfie stations that adorn the walls along with inspirational phrases, and positive messages are even embedded into the floor. The cafe also offers a “Cell Phone Jail” that Estrella calls her Family Unplugged Program, where you’ll get free donuts if you unplug during your time while dining-in because she wants people to spend time reconnecting with their families.
“For those that hang their heads while in line because they may be having a hard day, we even have positive messages for you on the floor, and you’ll see happy all over the cafe,” Estrella, a USMC Veteran and a survivor of family trauma dealing with depression and addiction during her life, said.
Estrella spent some 7 years as a professional wrestler in the WWE, and now says she wants to combat something else, instead.
“I want to focus on helping the community fight addiction and also to help fight mental health issues, to kind of bring them to the forefront and to normalize mental health issues, and I’ll use the cafe to do it.”
In doing just that, other than opening a very happy and cheerful cafe, she plans to allow local Alcholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups to use her cafe for meetings. “That’s just the beginning. Anything I can do to help, I will,” she said.
“I want to work with a lot of the community. I want to get therapists in here to do seminars and I want to bring in the County Alcohol & Drug Abuse Department to do some community outreach as well to discuss drug addiction with children.”
“Sunny Summers Cafe will be a place that provides outreach service and a place to discuss combating addiction. Instead of being a WWE champion, I want to be a champion of helping people overcome addiction, mental health issues and depression.”
Speaking of the WWE, Estrella plans to adorn parts of the cafe with WWE memorabilia including her Lacey Evans action figures, and lots more.
Originally introduced to wrestling while serving as a military police officer in the Marines, she trained and began her career on the independent circuit and started working for WWE in 2016. She debuted on the main roster on WWE’s popular Raw in 2019, is a veteran of the popular Royal Rumbles and WWE Smackdown, and over the next several years, she appeared on WWE programming until leaving the promotion in August 2023.
What’s in store
The cafe will be offering a variety of products for sale, including aromatherapy candles, sage smudge sticks, a variety of coffee cups t-shirts, as well as putty made and packaged by her 10 year old daughter, Summer, who is one-half of the cafe’s namesake along with 2 year old daughter, Sunny.
On the menu
As for the menu, Sunny Summers Cafe will serve hot & cold coffee drinks including lattes, cappuccino, macchiato, teas and even milkshakes with donuts on top.
Estrella says she will have a self serve donut bar, with donuts made fresh daily, along with wagyu beef donut burgers, hot dogs, waffle pops, pancakes, french toast, and that southern staple, biscuits & gravy.
Estrella said that Sunny Summers Café will be open daily at 5am to serve first responders and the military, and will close at 6pm.
It’s not every day a former WWE Wrestler opens a cafe in Beaufort SC. Be sure to check them out when they open next week, and you can follow Sunny Summers Cafe on Facebook, here.
