West 9th Cafe Closing
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August 10, 2011
Dear Phoenix Customers and Fans,
After almost three years of investing energy and resources into our well-loved café on West 9th Street, we have made the difficult decision that our last day of operation will be Wednesday, August 24th. We opened in this location, hoping to be part of the renaissance of downtown Cleveland, and as a way to live our values. We believe that investing in our city’s urban core is the right thing to do for our community’s future. We still think the future of downtown is bright; exciting projects such as the construction of the medical mart, the Flats development and the opening of the downtown casino are all on the horizon. However, our West 9th café has not yet been able to operate at a profit, and 12 months of astronomically high coffee prices have made it unfeasible for us to continue to invest in the cafe. Bob Raines and the Landmark Management team have been amazing partners. Bob’s professionalism, long-term strategic thinking and rational approach to business all make him an outstanding landlord and a great asset to the downtown community.
We have not yet determined what we will be doing with the furniture and fixtures at the West 9th café. We estimate that all of the contents of the location are worth about $25,000 if they were kept in place and operational. The Historic Warehouse District, Landmark Management and Phoenix Coffee all agree that it would be best for the neighborhood if the location could continue as a coffee shop. Therefore, we would like to encourage any interested party to approach us about acquiring the assets of this location. My email is sarah@phoenixcoffee.com. This café is arguably the prettiest and best-decorated Phoenix Coffee, it would be nice if someone else could take advantage of the café’s good looks and the bright future of downtown. We have posted pictures of the café at www.phoenixcoffee.com/westninthcafe . We have some really great retro furniture, high-quality modular cabinetry and stainless steel work surfaces, among other strong points.
On Thursday August 25th, I will be at the West 9th store with a pot of coffee and a tray of bagels (even though we will not be operational) from 10 am till noon, and will be available for conversation and questions about the café closure or other business opportunities.
Thanks to our West 9th café baristas for maintaining such a welcoming ambiance and for making great coffee with enthusiasm for three years.
Thank you to our patrons for your support and loyalty. We encourage you to visit our East 9th location, just south of Superior Avenue, for your Phoenix Coffee fix.
Sincerely,
Sarah Wilson-Jones
ceo & superbarista
PS If you are interested in any of the furniture that is at the store, please sign up for our mailing list, (sign up on our website) as that is how we will be notifying people of the online auction (if there is one).
Event recap: KSU Alumni coffee cupping @ W. 9th
Members of the Kent State University Alumni Association stopped by our W. 9th cafe for a special cupping. We hope everyone had as much fun as we did - and we hope to see you again soon! Here are a couple pictures from the event:
How Should You Tip Your Barista?
At Phoenix, we are thankful for the generosity of our customers who tip our baristas. We know that it's hard to know when to tip, how much to tip, and what is expected or even polite when it comes to tipping baristas. At a table service restaurant, the 18% guideline is firmly established. There really is no percentage guideline for counter service at a coffee shop, although on average, the gross tips from each day do add up to about 9% of the sales. Some people never tip, and some people tip $1.00 for their $2.00 coffee. We'd like to think that these big tippers are earning not only our appreciation, but also some good karma.
It's no surprise that our thoughts on tipping are quite different from Starbucks' position on the matter. In a 2006 NY Daily News article, Starbucks management was quoted as saying that Starbucks baristas don't need tips. “We don’t expect our customers to pay anything extra to receive our legendary service,” Starbucks marketing manager Dan Lewis explained. The tip boxes at Starbucks registers are there “to avoid loose tips on tables and counters throughout the store,” he said.
At Phoenix Coffee, our baristas do need tips, and we encourage customers to tip generously and often. We hope that our customers enjoy our authentic style of personal service, where baristas are given the freedom to simply be a person being of service to another person. We value this kind of personalized service, which is why you’ll never hear about a “standard greeting” or other service formulas at Phoenix. Instead, it’s our goal to create a warm, friendly ambiance at each of our cafes, where our baristas will greet you in their own individual way, and hopefully you’ll feel that they deserve to be rewarded for their efforts.
Thanks for your patronage and the generous tips!
Cawfee Tawk with Heidi Robb
Nationally known food expert and Cleveland resident Heidi Robb wrote an excellent ode to coffee with a big shout-out to the 
Phoenix Coffee West Ninth coffee cupping she attended last month. Phoenix is committed to educating the public about all things coffee and Heidi did a great job capturing the essence and experience at one of our cuppings. She writes on her blog:
...If you are a coffee lover at any level of enjoyment, a cupping will definitely hone your senses towards a deeper appreciation for the roasted and liquified bean. In a Triangulation tasting, three cups of ground beans are presented – two being the identical, one different. The goal is to detect the odd cup by smell and taste. It’s definitely trickier than it sounds, and forces you to pay attention to minute characteristics generally passed by in drinking a casual cup, much in the same way a guided wine tasting alerts your senses to specific nuances. Notes taken reflect the aromas and tastes of ” blueberry, potato, wet dirt, leather, bourbon”, among others. Smell and taste alter as the grinds change from dry to wet...
Thanks Heidi! Please note, almost all of the Phoenix Coffee Cafes have weekly cuppings. We are adding the times and dates to our website as we speak. Look for details on the News page and under the individual store pages on the Phoenix Coffee website.
Compostable Cups Are Here!
The new Phoenix Coffee compostable cups are just starting to arrive at our cafes. These cups are the culmination of almost a year's worth of thought and effort. They were painstakingly designed by our in-house designer, Sean Higgins. As the new cups begin to arrive at each cafe, we will now offer you a choice when you purchase a beverage to go: either bring your own mug or buy one of our new compostable cups for $0.10 each. This nominal ten cent "green fee" is our way of encouraging everyone to adopt sustainable habits, such as bringing your own mug and minimizing the use of disposables whenever possible. In Ireland, the country reduced the use of disposable shopping bags by 96% by introducing a similar "green fee". We hope to reduce our use of disposables by more than 100,000 cups this year, and to compost just as many, thereby reducing our ecological footprint. Thanks for helping with our efforts! You can read our press release here.
About the West Ninth Cafe
The newest Phoenix Café, opened in October of 2008, serves French Press coffee “on tap” as our regular coffees of the day. This café features rotating local artists, colorful walls and vintage furniture. Our pastry case is stocked with beautiful cupcakes, croissants, lemon squares and more from pastry chef Courtney Bonning from the Bonbon Bakeshop. You can also try one of our home made tartines, open faced sandwiches featuring ingredients such as roasted red peppers and smoked salmon.
This café is located across the street from the Map Room and next to Constantino’s Market, in the heart of Cleveland’s Historic Warehouse District, a neighborhood home to more than 10,000 downtown residents. There is on-street parking at meters, which is free on Saturdays and Sundays. When you stop in, you might meet Paulius, proprietor of the Velvet Tango Room, or one of the city’s public defenders, or see someone you know who lives in Bridgeview Apartments upstairs.
