Nonbeanery Café will open as first coffee shop in Cleveland’s Jefferson

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Nonbeanery Café, a queer-owned coffee shop opening at 13046 Lorain Ave. in Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood, will bring duck-rabbit coffee, house-made syrups and a cozy, vintage atmosphere to a former deli space next to Der Braumeister.

Owner Briana Bozin and café manager Allie Brown expect to open the 25-seat café in late September or early October. The opening was delayed as the business waited for its espresso machine, after nearly two years of work on the project.

The shop will operate from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, with four additional staff members joining Bozin and Brown.

For the couple, opening a coffee shop had long been a dream.

“It was a long-time goal for us,” Bozin said. “It was one of those things where over the years we said we’re going to quit our jobs and open a coffee shop.”

The eventual location came together through connections in the neighborhood. Bozin lives in the Jefferson/West Park area and met with neighborhood development representatives about wanting to open a café. Eventually, they were connected to Jenn Wirtz, the third-generation owner of Der Braumeister and the building that now houses Nonbeanery.

“And it just ended up being the right place, right time,” Bozin said.

Nonbeanery will occupy what had been a longtime deli space adjacent to the German restaurant and bar. Bozin and Brown began working with Wirtz in October 2025 while the owner gutted and white-boxed the former deli.

The café space was once Frank’s Delicatessen, where Wirtz’s grandmother, whom she calls Oma, was originally hired by the building’s previous owners.

“It used to be the deli space where my Oma was originally hired,” Wirtz said.

For years, the deli had remained in limbo. Wirtz said her mother would help her grandmother revive it around the holidays, but the business became harder to sustain as the neighborhood and grocery market changed. Eventually, the former deli became an overflow storage area for catering equipment and glassware from Der Braumeister.

The building work took longer than expected, but Wirtz said the space was ready for Bozin and Brown by July. For Wirtz, the project is part of a larger hope for Jefferson/Puritas and West Park — a neighborhood where residents can more easily walk to businesses and spend time with one another.

“I live in the neighborhood. I obviously own the building. I work in the neighborhood,” Wirtz said. “It was important to me, as it was to our community, that we get someone into that space that would contribute something.”

“And continue to push West Park, our little Jefferson/Puritas neighborhood, forward,” she said.

Nonbeanery will be the only coffee shop in the Jefferson neighborhood. The nearest options, Dahlia Coffee Co. in Cudell and Five Points Cafe further west in West Park, are not easily walkable from the area.

“We’re the only coffee shop in our neighborhood of Jefferson,” Bozin said. “It was kind of like the stars aligned type of thing where everything worked out.”

The menu is intentionally small, centered on coffee made from duck-rabbit beans and syrups made in-house. Bozin has a tea café background, while Brown has worked in food service. The couple had already spent years brewing coffee at home, and after partnering with duck-rabbit, they brewed its coffee at home to better understand what they wanted the café’s offerings to be.

House-made syrups will be a major part of the menu. Regular options will include vanilla, lavender and simple syrup, while seasonal flavors could include banana bread and pumpkin. The café will bring in baked goods such as scones and muffins from outside vendors because the space does not include a kitchen.

Its look, meanwhile, is designed to feel personal rather than polished in a conventional coffee-shop way. The shop includes secondhand decor, pieces from Bozin’s and Brown’s childhoods, vintage items and a VHS television playing old movies from their families’ old collections.

The café’s coffee equipment is new and state of the art, but Bozin and Brown completed much of the construction and design work themselves, including learning how to tile to cover the bar with handmade rainbow tiles.

“We’re tried to do as much of what we could on our own,” Bozin said.

“This kind of just looks like my house,” they continued. “We’re working here more than we’re at home, so we wanted to make sure that it felt like home to us, but then also be that kind of space for other people.”

Bozin described the design as “very kind of grandma chic.” Brown said keeping the café small was a deliberate choice, meant to make visitors feel at ease. The shop will also offer wall space for local artists to display and sell work.

“We wanted it to be small so people can feel comfortable,” Brown said.

The café’s name is also personal. Bozin and Brown are nonbinary, and the name began as a play on coffee beans while reflecting their identities.

“The neighborhood is excited. The queer community’s excited,” Bozin said.

For Bozin and Brown, the goal is not simply to fill a vacant storefront, but to become part of the neighborhood they already call home.

“We’re just trying to be good neighbors,” Bozin said.

Wirtz said the feeling is mutual.

“I wanted a coffee shop and by some force of nature we ended up getting Briana,” she said.

“I just love that there’s something in here that’s excited about it and gets it,” Wirtz said.

Follow @nonbeanarycle on Instagram to stay up-to-date with opening news.

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