Longtime downtown Olympia cafe to shut down food service

New Traditions Café — beloved in downtown Olympia for its welcoming vibe, simple and healthful food and intimate acoustic concerts — will serve its last meal on Saturday, Dec. 31.

“We have half the customers that we did pre-COVID,” said Jody Mackey, who owns the café and adjoining fair-trade store. “The café has never supported itself fully, but now, with all of the increased costs and fewer people coming in, it’s not possible to keep it open.

“I know that I could put out a GoFundMe, but in four months I’d probably be in exactly the same place, and I would have taken everybody’s money,” she said. “We have to re-envision it.”

For now, concerts and community events will continue in the café space, attached to New Traditions Fair Trade Gallery. But the sold-out Dec. 30 show, by Seattle-based Brazilian combo EntreMundos Quarteto, is the last at which people can order dinner from the menu, known for its soups, salads and hearty black bean enchiladas.

The decision to close the café was a difficult one for Mackey, who has worked at the shop and gallery since Dick Meyer opened it in October 1996 and now owns both businesses.

“Until a week and a half ago, I was still interviewing for a restaurant manager who could have brought this place back,” she told The Olympian on Tuesday. “When I realized I had to close it, I just curled up. It’s the last thing I want to do.”

Business was growing, but not quickly enough. The changes wrought by the pandemic — and by rising food and labor costs — are affecting other small downtown eateries, too, Mackey said. Three Magnets Brewing Co., for example, recently stopped serving food, and some other business owners have told her they are struggling.

“We can’t just have national chains,” she said. “People have to come downtown to support these precious places. We need our regional magicians in the kitchen working, and we need the kind places that are connected to our community.”

Mackey hopes that whatever happens next in the space next to the fair-trade shop will be a community gathering spot, as it has been for decades. It’s been a place where people were welcome to linger and chat for hours over coffee or tea. It’s hosted groups such as the Olympia Poetry Network and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, welcomed musicians to drop in and play, and provided space for countless fundraisers.

The Heartsparkle Players have been performing in the café since the very beginning, and the group will perform there again Jan. 13, said Debe Edden, Heartsparkle’s artistic director. The group partners with community groups for regular Playback Theatre shows, acting out stories shared by audience members.

“It felt like home from the very beginning,” Edden told The Olympian. “It’s a space that’s all about community. It’s always been a comfortable, warm, open space for us to be.

“No one likes to think of something as beautiful as the café ending, and yet we know these wonderful things do end,” she said. “How do we shift and change, and how do we support new things happening? That’s what life keeps teaching me over and over again. I hope that new things arise there.”

Mackey echoed those words. “Something is going to arise,” she said. “I just don’t know what it looks like yet.

“I’m totally woo-woo like that — like, ‘It’s totally going to work out; I know it is,’ ” she added, chuckling. “I’m through grieving about it pretty much. I’m ready for the next step to happen.”

Events at New Traditions

New Traditions Café, 300 Fifth Ave. SW, Olympia, will serve its regular menu for just two more days — from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 30, and Saturday, Dec. 31.

But community events will continue for now, as will already-booked concerts. Call 360-705-2819 for tickets and details.

On the schedule in January

• A Mic For Us Open Mic, 5:30 p.m. Jan. 5 and 19. By donation.

• “Stories of Everyday Kindness,” Heartsparkle Players, 6:30 p.m. Jan. 13. $10-$20 donation suggested with no one turned away for lack of funds.

• Olympia Poetry Network reading and open mic, 5:30 p.m. Jan. 18. By donation.

• Corner House (eclectic stringband), 6 p.m. Jan 22. $25, $18 for students and those with low incomes.

• Reggie Harris (urban folk-soul), 7 p.m. Jan 28. $25, $18 for students and those with low incomes.

• Newberry & Verch (fiddle and banjo), 7 p.m. Feb 9. $26, $18 for students and those with low incomes.

• Gangspil, Feb 17

• Kat Bula & Olivia Brown Lee, Feb 22

• Jim & Susie Malcolm, March 9 and 10

• The Jeremiahs, March 19

This story was originally published December 30, 2022 at 5:00 AM.