Café del Sol owners, left, Jackie Anonales, Violet A. Galindo and Maya Nieves are busy as baristas and owners of their new coffeehouse in North Aurora.
Courtesy of Dave Heun
If your instincts tell you that, for many generations, the desired location of a coffee shop has been in the heart of a downtown district, you’d be surprised how spot-on that thought is.
Historians tell us the first known coffee shop in a public place was Kiva Han in the Turkish city of Constantinople in 1475.
It could be why that tradition has worked for the coffee shops we find dotting our downtown areas.
In the past few decades, however, it has been increasingly common for coffee shop franchises and family-operated shops to choose locations along busy thoroughfares like Randall Road and farther east or west along Main Street in St. Charles or State Street in Geneva.
It takes a little more thought to determine where you might want to open a coffee shop these days, and Jackie Anonales and her partners Maya Nieves and Violet A. Galindo did just that in opening Café del Sol two months ago in North Aurora.
Based on how busy it was when I visited last Saturday morning, these three ladies from Aurora found a good spot in a retail strip at Randall Road and Oak Street, near plenty of places to draw coffee drinkers.
“We took into consideration the location of the nearby offices, apartments, a bank, a post office and all of the different businesses here (in the retail strip) that we hope are flourishing,” said Anonales, who pursued a dream in opening Café del Sol, while continuing to work full-time as a mental health therapist in Chicago.
“We figured it was a good spot, and I really like the size of the shop and the building layout itself,” Anonales added.
From inside this vintage coffee shop with a Hispanic motif, customers can easily see what Anonales and her partners noticed at the busy intersection of Randall and Oak, as well as the apartments and housing that could lure coffee lovers.
Nieves said a recent Facebook post reminding area residents that the new coffee shop had opened targeted Batavia residents for a reason.
“Batavia is not far away, and we just want more people there to know we are here,” Nieves said.
The interior of the new Cafe del Sol coffee shop in North Aurora.
Courtesy of Dave Heun
Customers turning Café del Sol into a part of their busy schedules are finding the shop has good coffee, croissant sandwiches, breakfast burritos, tamales and pastries.
It’s a good reminder that location matters for coffee shop owners and coffee lovers alike.
It has to be the focus of these operations, whether they have been in place for years or just a few months, like Café del Sol.
“Business has been very good so far, and we are getting our groove on things,” Anonales said. “It’s been a very good balance with my partners, as we are baristas and business owners. And we are doing the fun part now.”
The decor of the new Cafe del Sol coffee shop in North Aurora reflects the owners’ heritage and style.
Courtesy of Dave Heun
Though I am not a coffee drinker myself (I prefer tea), you could never convince me coffee shops don’t serve the dual purpose of satisfying coffee lovers while also providing the day’s “happy place” with a relaxing atmosphere to visit with friends or get some work done.
Even though we see many coffeehouses opening in retail strips and along our busiest streets, there will always be a place for the downtown shop.
Hopefully, that will come into play again in Geneva if another coffee operation swoops in to take over the empty Graham’s 318 Coffeehouse on Third Street. Few spots in the Tri-Cities area have a more perfect landing spot for coffee. As of this writing, no application has been submitted to the city to take over that location.
And yes, there are other places to get coffee in our downtowns.
Coroco, Arcedium, Maple Leaf and Townhouse Books in St. Charles come to mind. Batavia coffee lovers enjoy Limestone Coffee and Tea or Moka Coffee House.
In Geneva, Starbucks, Gather Bakery, All Chocolate Kitchen and Harvey’s Tales offer coffee. Owner Peter Pacheco has submitted an application to lease an empty spot in the Geneva Metra station to open Que Buen Churro in the future. The storefront sign features a cup of hot coffee.
Adding daffodil color
There is much to admire about Mount St. Mary Park in St. Charles, but “color” stands out in the spring because of the River Corridor Foundation’s annual Project Daffodil.
The project calls for volunteers to help plant upward of 5,000 new daffodil bulbs, this year taking place on Saturday, Oct. 19. The 2024 effort would bring the total display to more than 25,000 daffodils along the park’s west end.
Heinz Brothers Greenhouse Garden Center in St. Charles (donating the bulbs), Midwest Groundcover (donating more than 150 Virginia bluebells) and Midwest Compost (donating mulch) make this enhancement to the park possible.
Planting, which takes about two hours, begins at 9 a.m. Volunteers can register at projectdaffodilstc.com
Volunteers are grouped into small teams of five to seven members and assigned specific 10-by-10-foot areas for planting.
These laughs help pets
The combination of seeing the Second City comedy group and supporting an animal shelter at the same time has powerful appeal.
It’s why Anderson Humane has set a “comedy night” fundraiser with Second City at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23 at the Arcada Theatre in downtown St. Charles.
The famous Chicago-based Second City performers will take part in an improvisational comedy night as performers take suggestions from the audience and turn them into skits.
General admission tickets at $45 are available at ahconnects.org/events and clicking on the “Comedy Night at the Arcada” link, or by calling (847) 697-2880, ext. 84 and asking for Kim Gifford.
Anderson Humane says if tickets are still available the night of the show, they would be available at the theater.
The lazy days of passwords
We’re all being hacked pretty consistently these days. There is no way around that, based on the many data breaches taking place at any number of retail stores, health centers, communications companies and work places.
So, our data is out there. What happens to it is unknown, but we can be sure it is going to be on websites that sell the info to the bad guys.
For our part, it’s not time to be lazy about the passwords on our various accounts. Sure, we’ve allowed our world to become an overload of digital accounts and passwords to keep track of, but the bad guys don’t care about that. The more, the merrier for them.
Research from HostingAdvice.com, which conducted a survey of 810 Americans last summer about passwords, tells us we remain pretty lazy in the face of this danger.
The survey revealed that 26% of Americans still used the password “1234,” while 12% used the word “password” and 13% use “admin.” In the world of cyber thieves, that is low hanging fruit.
When prompted to change a password, nearly 30% simply modify an existing password.
Americans juggle an average of 17 passwords, the survey revealed, and 65% “struggle to remember them all.”
There’s nothing wrong with that last one, other than it is imperative to develop your own system for keeping track of passwords. I’m not sure I would recommend keeping something like that in a digital file. After all, the hackers are hacking digital files. I would recommend changing those passwords on a regular basis.
Cut those lights
My, how things have changed.
More than 30 years ago, Randall Square residents in Geneva were questioning the parking lot lights at a Venture store, one of the first to pop up along Randall Road in the spot that later housed a Gander Mountain store and now the At Home store.
It was a good question at the time, because it was one of the only spots with bright lights on the parking lot at night. For nearby homeowners, with no buffer in between, it seemed more like the floodlights police would throw on a building in a hostage situation or other standoffs in hopes of driving suspects crazy.
But that’s how bright lights stood out at the time along what was a dark strip of Randall Road.
It’s just an odd thing to think about when looking at what Randall Road has become from Batavia to St. Charles through the magic of development — and the enormous amount of light being cast out as part of it.
Grilled cheese spot taking shape
It’s been about 18 months since I first mentioned Batavia had approved a permit for an Everdine’s Grilled Cheese restaurant to take over the empty Hot Pan restaurant site at 227 W. Wilson St.
And it’s probably been more than two years since Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke first told me he was happy to see this business pick his city.
Well, it’s taking shape now, with the restaurant facade makeover and the Everdine sign in place.
It won’t be long now before area residents will discover what folks in Naperville have enjoyed for some time at the Everdine location on Jefferson Street.