NORTHAMPTON — After more than 73 years serving coffee, breakfast and lunch at Cooley Dickinson Hospital — often to those who could use a smile during a stressful time — the hospital’s volunteer-run Coffee Shop will close this summer and be replaced with a hospital-run grab-and-go cafe serving Starbucks products.
The switch to the new cafe is expected to take place over the summer and be managed by Cooley’s Nutrition Services team, said Kelly Mitchell, a spokesperson at Mass General Brigham, which owns CDH. The hospital will continue to use volunteers while the transition to an employee-run operation takes place.
Longtime volunteer Bob Rick began his involvement with the Coffee Shop nine years ago after he was treated at Cooley Dickinson following a surgery at Mass General Hospital in Boston. He said at a stressful time in his life, the shop’s cozy atmosphere and friendly staff brightened his days.
“I wanted to give back to the hospital because they had given back to me, and I wanted to work in the coffee shop, because I felt it had the most opportunity to meet the largest number of people, and to brighten their day,” Rick said. “I try to be super friendly — cook them some good food, and just make their day better, because most people who are in the hospital for whatever reason aren’t necessarily having a very good time that day.”
Rick explained that the decision to close the cafe came after a meeting of the Friends of Cooley Dickinson, which has overseen the shop for years, in which the organization decided to close the Coffee Shop as it “wasn’t making enough money.”
The financial need to close the shop was reiterated by the Friends of Cooley Dickinson President JoAnne Finck, who wrote in a statement that since the COVID-19 pandemic the cafe, usually staffed with two part-time employees and a volunteer staff, had difficulty staffing itself, which led to reduced hours of operation and financial hurdles.
“This will allow the hospital to provide extended and consistent hours of operation to support patients, visitors, and employees seven days a week …,” Finck wrote. “The Coffee Shop is vital to our community hospital and for our community. This change ensures its continuance for the future, benefiting visitors, our staff, and people utilizing hospital services.”
Finck added that the Friends of Cooley Dickinson will focus its attention on the hospital’s Gift Shop, which is also staffed mostly by volunteers, by looking to expand its product line and hours of operation. She thanked all of the staff and volunteers who served the Coffee Shop over the years.
Still, Rick said the cafe’s closure marks a bleak end of an era for him and his fellow volunteers, noting that while grab-and-go cafes are all too common, he believes that the charm of the volunteer-run coffee shop can not be replaced.
“I’ve been worried that this might happen for some time, but I was hoping that they would come to the volunteers and engage us in thinking of positive ways to save it — that’s sort of what made me so sad, is they didn’t come to us,” Rick said. “Even though I understand the hard problems they were having staffing it to keep it the way it was, I thought there were ways we might do that, and I was committed to volunteering many more hours to make it work, so it could stay that way and not just be another slick grab-and-go coffee shop kind of place.”
The new coffee shop will be open from Monday to Friday 6 a.m to 6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. It will serve Starbucks beverages, breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches, individual pizzas, grilled items, and salads.
