by Mark Van Streefkerk
Like many other cafes, Columbia City’s Empire Roasters and Records had to make some changes in order to weather the COVID-19 pandemic. While some coffee shops expanded their offerings to include grocery items or wines during lockdown, Empire went a different direction. Owner Ian Peters repurposed the cafe’s upstairs seating area into a record shop, which opened last November. Adding a record store to a cafe might have been an unconventional choice, but based on the positive community response, Columbia City’s only record store is here to stay.
“We would have never come up with this idea had it not been for the pandemic,” Peters said.
Continue reading The Pandemic Turned a Neighborhood Cafe Into Columbia City’s Only Record Store