Local coffee shops and cafes gradually return to re-energize Waterbury

October 3, 2020 |  By Cheryl Casey

PK Coffee's Brett Ramus takes a break from work to resume running the cafe on Foundry Street. Courtesy photo.

UPDATE: After its Oct. 3 trial event, PK Coffee plans to be open 8-noon, Mon-Weds. Watch its Facebook page for schedule updates. 

With the trial opening of PK Coffee on Foundry Street this Saturday morning, all of Waterbury’s locally owned coffee shops and cafes are back in business after shutdowns due to COVID-19. Cafe owners and customers alike are thrilled for the return of some level of caffeine-infused normalcy after months of uncertainty, difficult decisions, and disconnection.

Since March, local coffee shop and cafe owners have taken different approaches to dealing with the pandemic’s effects on their customers, employees and businesses.

PK Coffee had barely celebrated a month in Waterbury when the pandemic shut them down. As a new business in town, they didn’t have the finances on the books to qualify for relief funds, which ultimately affected how soon they could reopen. 

Now, having closed its Stowe cafe in August, owner Katrina Veerman is focused on “going back to the beginning” at its Waterbury operation and excited to “bring joy back...and re-enter the service space in style.” 

For Veerman, “Coffee is about community and joy, and surprising people with what they are drinking.” 

The Saturday pop-up event will offer beverages only from 7 a.m. to noon and it will give the PK team a chance to reconnect with the community it was just getting to know six months ago while trying out new business strategies. 

Next door at Stowe Street Cafe, operations as usual ceased on March 14. Owner Nicole Grenier and her staff agreed to close ahead of Gov. Phil Scott’s Stay Home Stay Safe order. “We felt a responsibility to close to keep our community safe,”  explained Grenier. In mid-May, the cafe reopened three days a week with online ordering and a limited menu for curbside pickup. 

Around the corner, K.C.’s Bagel Cafe’s owners struggled with their decision. Buffy Garrand and Kyle Russell, who have run K.C.’s together for 18 years, shared a gut feeling that their role was to stay open. 

“We struggled, watching our neighbors shutting down around us,” admitted Garrand. “It took us a month to realize we did the right thing.” 

With the Main Street and Stowe Street construction continuing through the summer, Garrand and Russell retained a steady stream of grateful customers. K.C.’s Bagel Cafe has remained open seven days a week. 

North of downtown along Vermont Route 100 in Waterbury Center, Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co. initially shut down cafe operations for about three weeks following the governor’s orders. Coffee Bar Manager Tom Alario explained that as a quick-service business and store, as well as a wholesale coffee-roasting business, they weren’t sure at first how state public health guidelines applied to their operation. 

Whether or not to reopen was “such a risk,” said Alario, “but the owners were more than willing to make sure we were keeping the lights on.” The company also had the financial luxury of being able to rely on their wholesale business to make up for lost coffee bar customers for awhile, Alario added. 

By the first week of May, the coffee bar had begun curbside pickup with orders coming in both online and by phone. June saw customers back inside placing orders to go. Five outdoor picnic tables with umbrellas offered a spot for those who wanted to sit and  linger while sipping their drinks. Vermont Artisan’s coffee bar is now operating seven days a week as well. 

Learning and following new rules 

These business owners have faced largely similar challenges and questions around establishing their new normal operations in pandemic conditions. Anxiety has been high for everyone. Garrand admitted to obsessively reading all of the state’s information every day to ensure the cafe was up-to-date in the guessing game of best precautionary measures. “I felt like we just lived and breathed COVID those first few months,” she said.

Alario acknowledged that he and his fellow baristas have to put in “more of an effort than usual” because of the added anxiety over safety. 

As Veerman and the PK team prepare to reopen, Veerman worries about the potential toll on her employees. “Anxiety is so high in the general public. How do we continue to create joy and take on that extra anxiety without bringing that anxiety home?” she wondered aloud. 

The question of customer flow is significant for these cafes with tight space. 

Grenier said she hopes Stowe Street Cafe will “at least open our doors for masked in-person ordering in the near future,” but remains uncertain about when or if the cafe’s dining room will again be available. 

K.C.’s only had to remove two tables from their seating area to meet state guidelines for in-person dining. At PK Coffee, Veerman is considering removing all of the seats and painting the floor to guide customers in one door and out another. “Grab-and-go is going to be even more important to us now,” she noted. 

Adjusting in order to reach customers 

Hender’s Bake Shop & Cafe, Stowe Street Cafe, and Vermont Artisan all turned to online ordering platforms to help serve their customers from a distance. While online ordering came about as a pandemic response, Alario said that the Vermont Artisan coffee bar will keep using it. “We get about 15-20 orders per day, mostly locals, regular customers,” he said. 

Not everyone is keen on ordering online, however. Garrand acknowledged she was “reluctantly looking into online ordering,” but with some still wary about ordering their bagel and coffee in person, online might be worth the cost. 

As they adjusted to doing business during the pandemic, all of the coffee shops had to make decisions around their schedules. 

Vermont Artisan stands out for opening at the relatively late hour of 9 a.m. Located on Route 100, its visible and convenient to both tourists and commuters. As many locals shifted to working from home, “we didn’t have the commuter crowd that we had previously,” explained Alario, so the small staff wasn’t needed to start much earlier. However, Alario added, “we’re now thinking of opening earlier, especially with the kids going back to school and more people out and about in the mornings.” 

Support from and for the community 

Despite the challenges, those running Waterbury’s coffee shops say they have received tremendous community support. The customer response to Stowe Street Cafe reopening was “overwhelming,” Grenier said. “Customers saw us as helping to bring some normalcy back and were supportive of our having to make difficult decisions.” On the last Saturday in September, the cafe recorded its best sales day in the five years it has been open, she said. 

Alario also noted an increase in sales despite the limited hours this spring and summer. August sales were about the same as in August 2019, he said, while September’s numbers were even better than the same stretch last year. 

The relationship with the community goes both ways. It’s not surprising that the town’s coffee shops played a central role in serving the community during the early months of the pandemic. Stowe Street Cafe chef Stephanie Biczko led an initiative to provide food boxes to families in need. Grenier added an online donations option to the cafe’s website and rallied  volunteers to assist.Grenier works as director of the Children’s Division for Washington County Mental Health Services, so she was well-positioned to help identify families most at risk.

Henders Bakery and K.C.’s Bagel Cafe donated food to the effort. Some volunteers contributed meals, while others gave money. Over 14 weeks, Biczko and volunteers assembled food boxes for some 25 families with a week’s worth of food in each box. “It worked out to about 150 meals per week,” Grenier said. 

Garrand and Russell already were giving away day-old bagels at K.C.’s, so they donated another 30 dozen to the food boxes. “Stowe Street Cafe took it to another level for us and really helped us feel good about things,” Garrand said. 

Hender’s Bakery & Cafe and Park Row Cafe could not be reached for comment for this report. Hender’s is taking online orders for pickup on its porch, Thursday through Sunday. Park Row recently established new hours and is open seven days a week with spaced indoor seating. 

Train station cafe remains closed

Since mid-March, the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Cafe & Visitor Center at the train station remains closed. The cafe is the only one that GMCR’s parent company, Keurig Dr Pepper, operates. The company leases the space from Revitalizing Waterbury while Amtrak uses a portion of the station for its passenger train service which also has been suspended since March.

Attempts to reach a Keurig corporate spokesperson for comment were unsuccessful. 

Local cafe manager Julia Garufi has been posting cafe updates on Facebook, the last one on Sept. 2. She said community members regularly ask her when it might reopen but so far, there’s no word from headquarters. 

“The GMCR Cafe will remain closed until further notice,” she wrote a month ago. “We hope to see you soon, and will continue to provide reopening information via Facebook, Waterbury Front Porch Forum, and at (802) 882-2700. Stay safe! Wear your mask! We miss you!”

Cheryl Casey is an associate professor of Communication at Champlain College and lives in Waterbury Center.