About Phoenix Coffee

THE PHOENIX STORY

A Phoenix is Born

Our founder, Carl Jones has been in the coffee and tea business for over 30 years and is considered by many to be Cleveland’s Coffee Guru. Carl founded Phoenix Coffee roastery in 1990, on Coventry Rd. in Cleveland Heights – the exact same street address where he opened the first Arabica Coffee and Tea in 1976. In 1991, Carl and his son Shane Jones opened the first Phoenix Café at 15108 Detroit Road. This café eventually became the Root Café which is now located at 15118 Detroit and is now owned by our good friends Julie Hutchison and Bobby Breitenstein. 

Fast forward to 2010, several building fires, staff changes, and U.S. presidents later, and Coventry Rd. is once again home to Phoenix Coffee as our Coventry Rd. cafe while our roastery is now on St. Clair Avenue in downtown Cleveland.  From our small beginnings we’ve grown to five cafes, a commercial roastery, mail order business, and wholesale accounts, but we remain committed to providing Clevelanders with the best coffee, tea and café experiences around. You can read more about each of our five cafes here.

SWJ, Superbarista and CEO 

Sarah Wilson-Jones, our ceo and superbarista, started at Phoenix in 1993 as a barista at a café that used to be located on public square, downtown. She then went on to function as a café manager, then general manager, wholesale delivery person, wholesale sales person, part-time bookkeeper, and more. But in 1998, Carl decided that Sarah could do a better job running and growing the company, so he “begifted” it to her. That’s about when Sarah (affectionately known as SWJ) discovered the Specialty Coffee Association of America LINK (which Carl Jones helped found in 1978), barista competitions, golden cup certification and professional coffee cupping.  She first traveled to “origin” and got to meet a coffee plant, up close and personal, in 2003, competed in her first barista competition in 2009, and has served as a judge at regional and national barista competitions, and as a volunteer at the World Barista Competition (Switzerland, 2007). For SWJ’s complete bio, click here.

The Phoenix Family

Dawn Andrews, our Roastery Manager, is Sarah’s first hire. Sarah hired Dawn as a barista in October of 1994.  Dawn has worked almost as many jobs in the company as Sarah, including tea maven, wholesale delivery person, coffee roaster, café manager, and more.  She is now the one who answers the phone most often at the roastery.  Dawn is an experienced coffee cupper and is also certified by the US Tea Association through Level 3 tea classes. Phoenix is a family business.  Ron Wilson, Sarah’s father, repairs coffee and tea brewers and grinders.Polly Wilson, Sarah’s mother, creates the coffee bag art that decorates the cafes, restores thrift store furniture for decorating the cafés, and can fix just about anything that’s broken.

The Myths and Mysteries of Phoenix

If Phoenix has a “flagship” store, it is our café located at 2287 Lee Road in Cleveland Heights. This café has been serving Phoenix Coffee since 1992 when Mickey Szilagyi opened it as “Miklos’ Coffee Bar”.  Phoenix bought the store from Mickey in October of 2000 when Mickey decided to move to Florida. We have recently renovated this café. After 18 years of continual operation, it definitely looked “well-loved”. 

The Lee Road Café is probably our flagship store because not only is it our oldest Phoenix Coffee location, but it has the most committed and community-minded customer base.  Our Lee Road customers, including the Phoenix Fellows (look for their plaques on the wall) are exceptionally involved in the operation of the business, so much so that the line between customer and employee, friend and client, is very blurry. Once, we ran out of eggs (when we used to make our breakfast sandwiches at this store) and a customer offered (and went) to the store to get us more.  Customers refill our cream station supplies, run to get ice when the ice machine breaks and have even planted the planters on the back patio in the spring.  We have an amazingly involved and thoughtful customer base at this store and for this we are eternally thankful. Once, a Lee Road customer, Jay Shorey, happened to be at the roastery when a truckload of coffee beans arrived and needed to be unloaded. Our tow motor driver, Ron Wilson, wasn’t there. So Jay hopped on the tow motor and unloaded the coffee. 

That’s how it is at Phoenix; we’re fortunate to have relationships with remarkably generous, helpful and thoughtful people. One of the things that gives the Lee Road Café a verging-on-mythical-and-cult-like following is the perception that we ran both the Starbucks and Arabica cafes out of business. Both companies did have locations on Lee Road, both of which are now closed. Starbucks lasted five years, Arabica only a few, but it’s our opinion that having the competition on the street was only good for our business, and we truly wish that the customer base could have sustained our competitors as well.

Leaders in Coffee Culture

In January of 2008, Phoenix hosted a three day skill building workshop, through the Specialty Coffee Association of America.  This attracted coffee folks from around Cleveland, as well as from as far away as Korea and Canada, all of whom were passionate about coffee and learning about coffee. Workshops were conducted on Espresso Preparation, Coffee Cupping, and Golden Cup Coffee Brewing. Through this experience, we learned what it takes to pull off such an event, and were able to educate many Phoenixers on new aspects of the coffee business.

Also in 2008, Phoenix closed our café located at 2155 Superior Avenue, which had been there for 13 years, and opened our two downtown cafes, at 1700 East 9th Street and 1300 West 9th Street.Closing the Superior Café represented the end of an era for Phoenix.  This transition marked a quantum leap in Phoenix’s sophistication as a coffee retailer.  At the Superior café, we used to sell deli sandwiches and potato chips alongside our lattes. 

Now, at our East 9th store, we sell locally baked croissants next to our gorgeous rosetta lattes, and at West 9th, we offer French Press coffee exclusively alongside our creative and elegant tartines (open-faced sandwiches made with ingredients like roasted red peppers and smoked salmon).

OUR CORE VALUES

Another seminal event of 2008 was recording Phoenix’s core values. We used an Appreciative Inquiry process in order to discover what they were.  It was an enlightening process that has now given us a living document to use to help us make difficult decisions and to guide our day-to-day actions. Click here for a copy of Phoenix's Core Values which explains what we value most such as taking care of our employees, coffee eduction and training, thrifted furniture, recycling, using local vendors as much as possible, and repairing old things.