Customers pay for their order at the counter at Austin’s Coffee & Film on the morning of its soft opening on Monday. The coffee shop reopened at its new location about a mile west of its original home on Fairbanks Avenue.
Juno Le
Soft chatter among employees and customers filled a freshly relocated Winter Park coffee shop and arts landmark early Monday morning. Apologies were offered to customers for the unavailability of chai and espresso, as the espresso machine was being repaired in the background.
Eclectic Winter Park third space, Austin’s Coffee & Film, soft opened its new location at 7 a.m. on Monday, with loyal customers stopping by for drinks and staying for the ambience.
About a mile west of its original home of 20 years, the coffee shop now resides at 2240 W. Fairbanks Ave. in the space that the Fairbanks Food Mart used to occupy.
Emma Jaramillo, a junior photonic science and engineering major at UCF, was hired at Austin’s in December. Jaramillo worked for the company during its hiatus between the old location and the opening of the new one.
“I really hope we can get that old vibe again and have people come enjoy a show, enjoy music, enjoy the third spaceness of it all,” Jaramillo said. “I know when it was gone, people went to Stardust or other places where they can hang out, but I really hope we can get that atmosphere back.”
Emma Tweedy, a sophomore studio art major at UCF, looks forward to having a treasured third space back in her community. Her aunt is one of Austin’s new owners, and her artwork will be among those featured in the coffee shop’s new location.
“I’m honestly just excited for another third space that I can bring my friends where no one’s pressured to drink or anything like that, just mostly like chill, get out of the house, do homework, stuff like that,” Tweedy said.
In its plan to fix the congested intersection of Fairbanks Avenue and Denning Drive, the City of Winter Park purchased the property that the original Austin’s was residing on for $5.5 million. Assistant manager Bobby Barnett described the team’s initial panic upon learning that the shop would have to relocate.
“The last year of Austin’s was really difficult for everyone, Barnett said. “It was like, ‘Are we gonna even be open next month? Is this it?’ And all of us were just staring down until the very end, in this whole waiting period.”
The coffee shop closed its original location at 929 W. Fairbanks Ave. on Oct. 25 with a “RIP” party. In its move to a new home, Austin’s Coffee is under new management, co-owned by siblings Angela Whitmer and Richard Whitmer, as well as stand-up comedian and America’s Got Talent finalist Preacher Lawson.
The new owners, according to Barnett, kept all of Austin’s original employees. While they still had their jobs at the coffee shop, employees, including Barnett, had sought out new jobs to make it through the shop’s hiatus.
“It’s kind of like a little family here that is trauma-bonded by the city taking our jobs away,” Barnett said. “We all had to find other jobs over the last three months, which was super lame, and I felt kind of personally defeated by that.”
Now reopened, Austin’s Coffee is back to being open 24 hours, seven days a week, just as it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Each day of the week will feature a different open-mic night: Sunday is comedy night, Monday is hip-hop night, Tuesday is songwriters night, Wednesday is poetry night, Thursday is jazz night, Friday is an additional songwriters night and Saturday will feature live music.
Jaramillo and Tweedy agreed that having Austin’s reopened is a welcome benefit to other college students looking for a nearby third space.
“College students like coffee, and they like taking pictures at fun places,” Tweedy said. “Half the reason people go to Stardust is their bathroom. It’s fun to do something else and get out of your dorm or apartment and hang out with your friends off campus.”