Phoenix Coffee Finds a New Downtown Home at Skyline 776

Last month, Phoenix Coffee closed its last downtown café, a location that had been in business since 2007. At the time of the announcement, the local coffee roaster teased that a new downtown home was already in the works.

“We had irons in a couple fires,” says general manager Toby Reif.

As it turns out, none of those irons panned out. But an even better opportunity did when a friend suggested a nearly turn-key space at Skyline 776, the brand-new luxury apartment building in downtown Cleveland.

“It was serendipitous,” adds Reif. “It was one of those things that felt too good to be true: right size, still close to the old space, it’s bright in ways that our old space wasn’t.”

Reif says that while it was bitter-sweet to leave the downtown space they had called home for 17 years, that space no longer served the current needs of the coffee company.

“It was a challenging space to operate, and it was built with a very different Cleveland in mind,” he says of the café at 1700 E. 9th St.

Reif described the former café as cavernous, dark, and located on the ground floor of a parking garage attached to an office building.

At roughly half the size, the new café is right-sized for today’s downtown coffee consumer, says Reif. There will still be enough room for in-house seating as well.

When it opens in the coming days or weeks, Phoenix Coffee store number five will offer the same lineup of fresh-baked cookies, muffins and scones supplemented by Cleveland Bagels and gluten-free and vegan treats from Philomena Bake Shop.