Pour Cleveland Permanently Shutters Downtown Retail Location

Charlie Eisenstat has permanently closed his downtown coffee shop Pour Cleveland, which he opened in 2013. The retail establishment had ceased serving customers in March and never reopened.

“We were trying to hold out hope that something would change sooner, but it’s going to be a while before downtown will be able to sustain a business like ours,” he explains. “When we first decided to close, I thought it would be a couple weeks.”

Eisenstat says that he had hoped normal downtown life would return, but even after a year, the outlook for his business had not improved.

“There’s a growing residential population, but we really are still so dependent on events, tourism and not just the regular residential crowd,” he states. “And even students. CSU went pretty much fully remote, no plays, no sporting events, no conferences. That’s really what drove our business down there.”

Eisenstat still maintains a coffee roastery and e-commerce site for international coffees.

His next order of business, he says, will be to find a good use for all of his brewing equipment.

“I’m sure we’ll eventually open back up in a new spot,” he says. “I’m just not sure if it will be downtown or elsewhere. But I would love to continue to see downtown grow and thrive one day, but it’s hard to say when that will happen.”