Magpie Café has stopped serving dinner at its downtown location and has begun utilizing the 3,000-square-foot space on the ground floor of the Commerce Building as a venue for private parties and events in the evenings.
Owners James and Lina Jacobs made the decision to scale back hours of operation in February, after noticing that nighttime foot traffic downtown had slowed since the café’s opening in the fall of 2016.
“We had a really strong business for a year or so,” James Jacobs says. “But lately, there just weren’t as many people downtown anymore, though we were constantly being asked to use the space for events and private parties and stuff. So we just decided that for the betterment of our team we would kind of open ourselves up for that more.”
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In the two months or so since, he says demand for the space as an event venue has been brisk.
“We’ve done rehearsal dinners, showers, even weddings there,” he says.
Read on for the full story from Daily Report and the cafe’s hopes to reopen dinner service later.