Courtesy of Colin Gawel
Colin's Coffee
On Aug. 20, Colin Gawel sold his final cups of joe to an unrelenting line of longtime visitors. Colin’s Coffee was known for its charm and personality, always reflecting the boldness of its owner, who was forced into a change of scenery when Golden Bear Center was demolished.
In 2006, Gawel was in a precarious spot. He had been a touring musician for his entire adult life, but this time was coming to an end. His son, Owen, was beginning preschool and one of his bandmates was moving across the country to be a teacher, so he, too, needed a new career path. Gawel worked in Brewster’s Coffee at the time, and the owner no longer wanted to run the shop.
“(The owner) couldn’t get anyone to buy it and he was just going to close and I thought, ‘Well, maybe we’ll work out a deal and I’ll take over and you can just leave,’” Gawel says. “And he was like ‘OK,’ so basically within a day he handed me the keys and I became the owner.”
Gawel quickly invested everything he had in the coffee shop that now bore his name.
“For 10 years I was just trying to pay rent,” he says. “I wasn’t running a business; I was running a 30-day crisis center.”
Gawel says having a coffee shop isn’t as glamorous or laid-back as it may seem. As a member of numerous rock bands throughout his lifetime, Gawel is able to rise to the occasion and handle the noise and stress that comes with running an unpredictable business.
“When the air conditioner breaks and you gotta sell 3,000 cups of coffee to pay for that, you’re not getting paid,” he says. “If you’re gonna play in a band or do an independent kind of thing, you better be ready to roll with the hard times too. And if you’re gonna get bitter about it, then just go get a job at Nationwide and be bitter and get benefits and health insurance.”
Gawel has kept his focus on curating the experience of Colin’s Coffee, with carefully selected setlists filling the air each day – which you can read about on the blog he started at www.pencilstorm.com – as well as local reading and rock ‘n’ roll books.
“Coffee’s got a different vibe and you get to meet everybody from all walks of life. It’s a cool place to be,” he says. “I think when you’re there every day you don’t really notice it, but obviously the response to the closing, I think, caught all of us off guard.”
For longtime Colin’s patrons, however, the line that wrapped around the building for the entirety of its final day was no surprise.
If you stood in Colin’s for even 10 minutes during its final month in Golden Bear Center, you’d have heard at least one caffeine-craving patron asking Gawel what was happening next.
Gawel himself is central to the inviting nature of Colin’s Coffee, always finding time to talk to each guest about their kid’s football season or to chat about a Cincinnati Reds player having a breakout series.
“People talk about, ‘Oh, your business is getting the wrecking ball,’ or whatever, but there was just a lot of good that came out of the coffee shop,” Gawel says. “You can’t just go through life and focus on the end. What about all the great things that happened? I met my wife there for God’s sake.”
He says the day they met is his favorite memory from Colin’s Coffee.
As for what’s next, Gawel worked out a deal with The Daily Growler in Upper Arlington, so he will still be serving riverside coffee daily.
“It’s gonna be a different business model, but they’ve been super cool, super gracious and we’re getting to keep our vibe and staff going and see if people follow us over there,” Gawel says.
“Every shot’s not created equal.” – Colin Gawel
Gawel’s expert coffee brewing advice is to always use good beans and grind them fresh daily. He says that each brew will be different, so it’s important to be conscious of your palate and preferences.
“We use an old-school machine so there’s an actual barista where the grind changes depending on the day, the weather, how hard you pack it,” Gawel says. “My espresso machine cost more than my car. You can decide what that means about me.”
Tyler Kirkendall is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at tkirkendall@cityscenemediagroup.com.
