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After a six-year long hiatus, the Queen Street Commons Café in downtown Kitchener is welcoming people back in a brand new renovated space.
The café has been a fixture of downtown Kitchener since 2006 as part of The Working Centre network, offering affordable vegetarian meals and pastries each day, all made in house.
Like many businesses at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, it closed its doors to the public. That’s also when staff started thinking about what improvements could be done to the space.
“The final result really has been beautiful and it took a lot of work, but you feel it when you’re in the space now and it’s being used really well now,” Joe Mancini, co-founder of The Working Centre, told CBC News while giving a tour of the space.
Joe Mancini of The Working Centre stands in the newly renovated Queen Street Commons Café. The coffee shop reopened in April after a six-year long closure. (Carmen Groleau/CBC)
He said the café is more spacious and accessible since they moved the kitchen and serving area from the middle of the café to the left side of the building with an added seating bar.
That move gave more space for washrooms, storage and made the kitchen more efficient.
“We have laundry on the main floor now and we now have a slot sink, things that we didn’t have before, which makes it a lot easier to run a café,” Mancini said.
“Before it was piecemealed together, but now we thought about it and it’s all integrated.”
Other changes were made to the lighting and the heating and cooling system, going from gas to a heat pump, which opened up more room in the back area of the café to add seating.
Renovating the space took longer than expected. Mancini said three years were spent on the building permits at the same time that The Working Centre was becoming busier with its involvement in affordable housing projects.
“We rebuilt St. John’s Kitchen and that whole complex there and we opened 230 shelter beds at University Avenue and the King Street shelter, the Erbs Road shelter and we built apartments on Queen Street across the street,” he said.
WATCH | How the Queens Street Commons is more than a coffee shop:
Queen Street Commons Café reopens
After a six-year closure, the Queen Street Commons Café in downtown Kitchener is welcoming people back in a newly renovated space. Joe Mancini of The Working Centre shares how the space is more than just a coffee shop for the community.A second home for community
Despite the amount of work it took to get the café open in April, Mancini said the essence of what makes Queen Street Commons special remains.
It’s more than a coffee shop, he said. It’s gathering place, a place of employment and a place where the community can eat affordably.
Kayli Kinnear, who has worked at the café and is involved with The Working Centre in different roles, describes Queen Street Commons as a second home or a space for a “true mix of community.”
“Knowing what it means to so many people and how important that is to the community is really nice to see,” Kinnear said.
Kayli Kinnear worked at the Queen Street Commons Café for many years before it closed in March 2020 when the pandemic began. She says the café is more than a coffee shop for many people in the community. (Carmen Groleau/CBC)
She said the café may not be responding to the urgent needs in the community, but it does respond to people’s need to be together, which she feels strengthens the work that The Working Centre is doing.
“This tool is less tangible. It’s the space, the community and the ability to purchase an affordable meal for yourself or invite someone to lunch and have the ability for that generosity and communing together over food,” Kinnear said.
“That is the tool that you find here at the Queen Street Commons Café.”