Stone Creek Reopens Downer Cafe

Stone Creek Coffee on Downer Ave. in 2018. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Stone Creek Coffee has reopened its Downer Avenue cafe with a walk-up window.

The company closed all 13 of its cafes on March 16th, pledging to continue paying employees and fulfilling online orders.

“We’ve been working over the last several weeks to set a plan where we could resume service at our cafes while taking appropriate steps to protect the health and well-being of our team and guests,” said the company in a Facebook post.

The Downer cafe, located at 2650 N. Downer Ave. on the city’s East Side, is the first to open under the plan, but the company said it will reopen other cafes in the coming weeks. A walk-up window was planned for the Downer Avenue  location when it was first approved in 2017.

Orders must be placed through the company’s smartphone application or website. Those with gift cards are currently unable to use them. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to integrate our cafe gift cards with our mobile platform for this phase of our reopen. If you could be patient with our baristas, we will be able to accept them again when we invite customers back into our cafes,” said the company.

Under the state’s “Safer at Home” order, all bars, restaurants and cafes are prohibited from offering dine-in service, but can offer carryout or delivery. Coffee shops across the state have worked to adapt to the order, including shrinking menu offerings and installing walk-up windows.

Stone Creek is providing all of its employees with washable face masks, taking employee temperatures at the start of each shift and regularly sanitizing handoff stations. It has also begun installing plexiglass barriers inside its stores in anticipation of their eventually reopening.

The cafe is open daily from 6 a.m. through 5 p.m.