After two months’ closure, the owners of Kayak Cafe weren’t sure what to expect. When the cafe closed in March, they were serving an average of two customers per day at their walk-up window — down about 95 percent from normal. Now, were Cordovans ready to venture out of their homes in spite of the coronavirus? And would local social-distancing and masking rules infringe on the venue’s laid-back atmosphere?
“Honestly, I was kind of dreading coming back,” co-owner Karen Deaton Perry said. “I was nervous about the outcome. What would happen when we really reopened? What kind of response would we get from the community? Were people ready to come out of hiding? … To peek out into the sunlight a little bit?”
When Kayak Cafe reopened on Memorial Day, business was still slow, but gradually improved over the following two weeks. By Wednesday, June 3, the cafe was not yet turning a profit, but neither was it any longer in freefall.
Deaton Perry and her husband and business partner Trenton Perry used their forced two-month vacation to renovate the cafe, adding shelves and a bar-top, and to expand the cafe’s menu. As well as the usual assortment of lattes, cappuccinos and breves, Kayak Cafe now highlights an array of non-coffee drinks including the London fog, a flavored tea-based drink; milkshakes; smoothies; and matcha, a finely powdered preparation of green tea with anxiety-reducing effects. The cafe is also working up a menu of mocktails using locally foraged ingredients, such as a raspberry-mint faux mojito, layered to resemble the setting Alaskan sun.
Deaton Perry was relieved to find that social-distancing rules and the venue’s rigorous, self-imposed sanitation procedures hadn’t interfered with customers’ ability to relax and unwind.
“That’s one thing that I’m hearing from a lot of customers as they come in — it’s nice to just feel like the world isn’t burning all around us, for a few minutes, as we come in and sip our coffee,” Deaton Perry said. “Just to pretend, for a few minutes, is nice.”
Kayak Cafe has also hired its first employees, two baristas whom Deaton Perry is training. With work, she said, things are returning to normal — more or less.
