ROGERS PARK — The Common Cup coffee shop has reopened after a six-month closure caused by pandemic hardships.
It reopened in September with reduced hours. It’s open 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday-Sunday at 1501 W. Morse Ave. The cafe is hiring, and management hopes to expand its menu with more lunch options — and bring back Common Cup’s popular pies.
“The goal is to go back to being open six or seven days a week, but it’s going to be a slow rollout,” manager Audrey Ney said.
The Common Cup belongs to Entrenuity, a nonprofit that offers entrepreneurship training programs. The nonprofit bought The Common Cup from founders John and Ruth Hoekwater in 2019.
Entrenuity owns multiple businesses, including another coffee shop called Overflow Coffee at 1449 S. Michigan Ave.
“Entrenuity took very good care of the staff, trying to pay us and giving us as many hours as possible,” Ney said. “I think it was very kind but also very hard to keep the business running when the sales weren’t high, or as high as we needed them to be.”
When The Common Cup closed, Entrenuity offered staff members jobs at Overflow Coffee. Ney, who at the time was working as a barista, took the job with “a little bit of hope that The Common Cup would reopen.”
Ney had a role in the reopening of The Common Cup.
“We had to come up with a plan on how to make sales work and how to social distance,” she said. “But most people in Rogers Park have been very respectful of the mask mandate, and now that many are vaccinated we thought that this was something we could definitely do.”
Ney said the cafe is hiring for a manager and will likely need to do more hiring in the near future.
“I posted on Instagram that we were hiring, and we received so many applications,” Ney said. “I think that’s a beautiful testament to the atmosphere we’ve created.”
Job description and instructions on how to apply can be found on The Common Cup’s website.
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