Hey everyone!
February is quickly approaching and it is a pretty damn big month for us as we will be moving to our new location at 62 E Michigan Ave. When we started two summers ago in the cargo units on Hambly and McCambly we couldn’t have imagined how quickly we would be able to move. We started serving cold brew and hot batch brew coffee in an 8 x 20 cargo container in 2018 and in February of 2020 we are moving into a newly renovated 1900 square foot space on Michigan Avenue! As quickly as this has seemed we have been working on this move to our permanent space for over a year.
First, little bit of background on our space, 62 E Michigan Ave is home to JPG Resources, a food consulting business founded by Jeff Grogg. We met Jeff back in 2017 at the Can-Do-Kitchen when we were in their food entrepreneurship boot camp. As I am sure we have told you all before, we kept in touch with Jeff and the rest is history. We had a few meetings about the possibility of us moving into his new, undisclosed, downtown location but we had just signed a lease for our current location and weren’t in a position to move into a full large location yet. We were confident in our concept but had no proof yet, so we went full steam ahead into 80 West and worked as hard as we could to find out if we could make the cafe work.
This move has been challenging and a long process but it has taught us a lot about ourselves and what we can bring to the downtown table. We had to finalize business plans, meet with contractors, coordinate our schedules to synch up with other schedules and much much more. We are very close to having the build out completed and we are very excited for everyone to see the space. We have put a lot of hard work and effort into making Cafe Rica a place where everyone feels welcome and to make it a place that you can call a second home. We hope this vision and mission has been translated into our new space. We plan on having different events and performances there, please let us know of anything that you would like to see there!
With all of that being said, we are planning to have out Grand Opening on February 29th, so far, everything has been on schedule to allow that to happen and we are confident that we can open on that day! We hope you all can make it down that day or week to see our new place and we will announce a date for an open house that will be before we open. Thank you for all of your support for us during this venture and we hope to continue this journey with all of you.
If you would like to see a fly-by video of your new space you can see it here.