From left: Wayne and Lauren Harvey with their child Echo at the newly opened Rainy Day Coffee. (Bailey Connor)
Lauren and Wayne Harvey have coffee to thank for their marriage.
The husband-and-wife team, which opened a coffee shop last week just north of City Park in 200 square feet repurposed from a functioning salon, met while working the graveyard shift at a diner in Seattle. Their first dates were over coffee in the morning.
Now they’ve tried to bring a little bit of Seattle to the Skyland neighborhood.
“Having gone to East High School and lived in Whittier while I was going to CU Denver, we knew that City Park was the right area,” said Lauren.
“Seattle has a lot of ways to get your coffee, from big coffee chains to small shops, to grab ‘n’ go espresso carts. A lot of our lives happened in coffee shops, and we wanted to bring some of that with us to Denver.”
Lauren, 26, is also a stylist in the Du Jour Hari Studio, while Wayne, 28, is the coffee aficionado. Wayne said he gets semi-weekly deliveries of beans from Copper Door Coffee Roasters.
The couple started Rainy Day Café with $5,000 from a private investor who is a client of Du Jour Hair Studio, and $3,000 from a Kickstarter campaign.
The Harveys said the neighborhood has lots of vacant space. But they are optimistic, noting that Plymouth restaurant to their east is expanding, a new condo complex across the street is under construction and a pet food shop and ice cream store are soon to arrive in adjacent spaces.
And they want the shop to be a meeting place for the neighborhood. “I would love it if 90 percent of our customers walked here,” Lauren said.
The café takes up about 170 square feet inside the 600 square foot space. There is seating for eight inside, and six outside.
Whittier Café is the only other café in the neighborhood.
From left: Wayne and Lauren Harvey with their child Echo at the newly opened Rainy Day Coffee. (Bailey Connor)
Lauren and Wayne Harvey have coffee to thank for their marriage.
The husband-and-wife team, which opened a coffee shop last week just north of City Park in 200 square feet repurposed from a functioning salon, met while working the graveyard shift at a diner in Seattle. Their first dates were over coffee in the morning.
Now they’ve tried to bring a little bit of Seattle to the Skyland neighborhood.
“Having gone to East High School and lived in Whittier while I was going to CU Denver, we knew that City Park was the right area,” said Lauren.
“Seattle has a lot of ways to get your coffee, from big coffee chains to small shops, to grab ‘n’ go espresso carts. A lot of our lives happened in coffee shops, and we wanted to bring some of that with us to Denver.”
Lauren, 26, is also a stylist in the Du Jour Hari Studio, while Wayne, 28, is the coffee aficionado. Wayne said he gets semi-weekly deliveries of beans from Copper Door Coffee Roasters.
The couple started Rainy Day Café with $5,000 from a private investor who is a client of Du Jour Hair Studio, and $3,000 from a Kickstarter campaign.
The Harveys said the neighborhood has lots of vacant space. But they are optimistic, noting that Plymouth restaurant to their east is expanding, a new condo complex across the street is under construction and a pet food shop and ice cream store are soon to arrive in adjacent spaces.
And they want the shop to be a meeting place for the neighborhood. “I would love it if 90 percent of our customers walked here,” Lauren said.
The café takes up about 170 square feet inside the 600 square foot space. There is seating for eight inside, and six outside.
Whittier Café is the only other café in the neighborhood.
This town still doesn’t have enough coffee shops! Bravo Lauren and Wayne.