Published: March 11, 2006 11:31 pm         

Coffee Grounds owner says goodbye

There was no “ah-ha” moment for George Shumay. Like the community institution he unknowingly created 13 years ago, the decision to say goodbye to the Coffee Grounds just evolved.

“It’s really been a process over a number of years,” he said, Friday, sitting in the coffee house that has served him as office, home and social club since 1993. “I don’t ever want to get complacent in life. The world really is a big place, and I’d like to experience some new parts of it.”

Tuesday, Shumay will hand over the barista’s apron — and ownership of 423 Wabash Ave. — to Pete Wilson, a Terre Haute native who owns and operates Brazil Coffee Company in the Indiana city of the same name.

The consoling news for Coffee Grounds loyalists, whose number are legion and esteem is fierce, is their beloved shrine is not going to close. According to Wilson, but for a few cosmetic updates, it isn’t going to change much either.

“I know most people fear that’s going to happen, but it’s really not,” he said. “There’s just going to be a different face behind the counter — sometimes.”

Except for Shumay, the same people who now make lattes and pour mugs of “coffee of the day,” will do the same under Wilson and his wife, Jackie. There still will be exposed brick walls and revolving art exhibitions adorning them. There still will be classical and jazz music on the sound system, live music on weekends and some weeknights.

The place still will be called Coffee Grounds, will open at 7 a.m., Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and close at midnight every night.

The same Cancillio espresso machine will hiss and drip out strong coffee and steamed milk. The same Torani bottles of flavored syrup will be available for specialty shots. Presumably, the same eclectic bunch of students, professors, homemakers, executives, politicians, artists and philosopher kings still will fill the mismatched tables and chairs.

Nevertheless, even with all that, the Coffee Grounds won’t be the same without Shumay.

“I have a lot of respect for George. He is really a pioneer in Vigo County,” Wilson said. “He paved the way for everybody, Java Haute, Coffee Break, everyone. He was the first.”

A Cleveland native, Shumay came to Terre Haute to study mechanical engineering at Rose-Hulman. He graduated in 1991 and, with a Rose buddy, eventually leased a former restaurant space on the ground floor of the very old, three-story brick building between Fourth and Fifth streets.

In February 1993, Shumay opened Coffee Grounds, the city’s first espresso bar. It was seriously counter-cultural.

Starbucks was a name then with which mostly only West Coast folks were familiar. Except for a few big cities with strong Italian enclaves — New York, Chicago, San Francisco — coffee in the United States generally came out of vacuum-packed cans, already ground, went into commercial, electric brew machines and emerged in tea-toned, semi-transparent streams.

No one had even heard of Chai, let alone knew how to pronounce it.

“A long time before we opened, we did research into what kind of espresso place we wanted,” Shumay said. “I remember going to Chicago and visiting 12 coffee houses. You know, not a single one of them exists today.”

Shumay said that if anyone had told him back then that he would buy the building (in 1995) and still be running the coffee joint in 2006, he would have dismissed the notion.

“When we opened, we were really young and naive. We didn’t have any preconceptions of what the place would be,” he said. “It just kind of developed on its own.”

Shumay admitted, “We didn’t know anything about business. But the whole point of doing it was people. We didn’t want it to be just a place you came in to get coffee or read a book. We wanted to create a place where everyone coming in felt comfortable.

“We wanted it to be as accommodating and accepting of everyone as possible. And that happened. Our clientele is very diverse, we have a very broad customer base: rich, poor, young, old, Republican, Democrat.”

Two of those customers were trying to absorb the news of Shumay’s departure Friday afternoon.

Kerry Stakeman and her sister, Kylie Douglas, said they had been coming into Coffee Grounds since they were in high school.

“I remember when he had games in here, smoking — people smoked big cigars and clove cigarettes,” said Stakeman, who now lives in Indianapolis. “I always stop in when I’m in town. This is really hard to believe.”

The move to a non-smoking environment is typical of Shumay’s and the Coffee Grounds’ progressive bent.

“It was definitely radical at the time,” he said. “I was a smoker. It was very unpopular. We lost a good chunk of our customer base initially. But the end result was a much broader base.”

Shumay said he made the decision for health and business reasons. High school kids hung out there so they could be with their friends and smoke. Shumay got calls from upset parents. It just made “common sense.”

Throughout the coming week, Shumay plans to be in and out of Coffee Grounds, helping Wilson with the transition. He likely will spend a lot of his time receiving hugs and watching grown people fight back tears.

“Certainly, this is an extremely difficult decision for me,” he said. “I think I’ve been denying the reality of this over the last few weeks. I feel such a strange obligation to my customers.”

From the beginning, he said, one of the primary aims of the Coffee Grounds was “to create a place where you felt like you were stepping outside of Terre Haute when you came in … a comfort zone where you could walk out of your daily life and spend an hour or two with a cup of coffee and a book or best friend or loved one.”

A friend of Shumay’s told him that his decision to call it a day, travel and see what else life holds for him is “momentous.”

“This place is an extension of me, I know,” he said. “You realize after awhile that the business becomes an extension of you and you of the business. You can’t reseparate the two. It follows you everywhere you go, especially in a small town. I’m really stepping away from my life, my identity.”

So, why is he doing it?

“Well, I think I have an ability to do something else, to contribute to the world in some other way,” he said. “And it’s good to get new energy in this place and in downtown Terre Haute, to get someone who is excited about coming to work every day.”

Wilson fills that bill. But he knows Shumay “is going to be a tough act to follow. I just hope we can hold true to what he has done,” he said.

Shumay is confident the Wilsons can. And they’ll have help.

“I’m sure the customers we already have will continue to guide where this place goes,” he said. “That’s what they’ve always done.”

As for a going-away party or official transfer of the keys, Shumay said, “We haven’t really talked about that. I don’t really know what to do. I’m going to just go with the flow.”

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

---

‘‘Certainly, this is an extremely difficult decision for me. I think I’ve been denying the reality of this over the last few weeks. I feel such a strange obligation to my customers.’’

George Shumay,

who started Coffee Grounds in 1993