The owners of three local businesses will serve as vendors for the cafe inside the new Hilliard branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 4500 Hickory Chase Way.
The new library is scheduled to open June 21.
Coffee Connections, 4004 Main St., and the Lil' Donut Factory and the Coffee Mess, 4543 Scioto Darby Road, joined to form a new business, Public Perk, which will be the vendor for Kerr's Cafe.
“Our pitch was that we were all local business owners and residents who are familiar to people (in Hilliard),” said Nate Grenier, who owns Coffee Connections with his wife, Sharon. “We all saw it as a great opportunity to become a part of the community in an ever deeper way.”
Grenier said the Friends of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the library system, contacted him and other coffee vendors that participated last year in Columbus Coffee Fest.
They learned in March they were selected but “had to keep it under wraps” until all the contracts were finalized, Grenier said.
Tim Hofmann, owner of the Coffee Mess, will be the operating manager of Public Perk.
Hofmann was the catalyst in creating the new partnership, reaching out to the Greniers and to Jordan and Bekah Smith, the owners of Lil' Donut Factory.
Hofmann and Nate Grenier brewed coffee together before each gained their own storefronts.
Hofmann also has experience with library coffee shops. He ran a coffee shop at a U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, before he moved to Hilliard with his family in 2014, he said.
Hofmann said he called the Columbus library even before he was aware a cafe was in the works to inquire about opening one.
“If there was going to be a proposal for one, I wanted in," he said.
The email for proposals “was widely distributed” but Hofmann did not know how many businesses expressed interest or were considered, he said.
The Coffee Mess will serve as the coffee vendor, Coffee Connections will sell pastries and the Lil’ Donut Factory will provide doughnuts, according to Grenier.
Coffee Connections will handle programming for activities at the cafe, he said.
When the Hilliard branch opens June 21, it will be one of only a handful of libraries in the system with a cafe, said Ben Zenitsky, a spokesman for the library system.
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