Malden’s Cafe Reynard Brews Coffee, Revolution

Cafe Reynard at Idle Hands. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

If most revolutions start in coffee shops, the next one just might be brewing in Malden. Now, five mornings a week, Idle Hands Craft Ales brewery hosts Cafe Reynard, a “trans-run, worker-owned queer cafe and coffee roaster,” as founder, roaster, and co-owner Eddy Martinez describes the Malden Center initiative that aims to be “a community space, especially for trans people, immigrants, and other marginalized peoples.” Over ethically sourced pour-over coffee and cold brew flights—not to mention outstanding doughnuts for sale by frequent collaborator Kate Holowchik (Lionheart Confections)—conditions are ripe for connecting.

“No hay revolución sin café,” says Martinez. Translation: “‘No revolution without coffee.’ I’ve heard that said and I cannot disagree.” Sometimes, revolution comes quietly, like the simple fact that Martinez and co-owner Athena Jacobowitz Teatum can physically sit on the job. “It shouldn’t be a revolutionary thing, but it very much is,” says Martinez, who has worked a string of food service jobs that felt exploitative.

Unsurprisingly, a focus on workers’ rights is a key part of the Cafe Reynard ethos. Martinez and Jacobowitz Teatum plan to bring on more worker-owners—and non-owner staff, too—and build the kind of workplace that doesn’t exploit its employees. To do that, “we’re taking no chances,” says Martinez. “We’re good people, we have good consciences, but we have to put systems in place. There are a million different ways that you could loophole your way around cooperative ethics in order to exploit people, so we’re going to go with whatever union gives us the time of day.” Workers deserve protection, says Martinez, “and if that’s revolutionary, so be it. We have revolutionary ambitions. Don’t tell the FBI. We’re just a coffee shop!”

Just a coffee shop, yes, but one primed to serve as an inclusive community gathering space that happens to have coffee-aficionado-worthy roasts. “Coffee is a vector to create a social space where people can hang out and feel comfortable and safe being themselves,” says Jacobowitz Teatum. “I’ve been dreaming about having a little queer cafe for a long time. I love the queer community, and our gathering spaces historically have been bars. Having a place built around coffee makes it so you can have a wider range of people come in.”

Cafe Reynard founder, roaster, and worker-owner Eddy Martinez at Idle Hands. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

The cafe takes its name from Martinez’s alter-ego, Reynard, which is in turn inspired by Reynard the Fox, a recurring character in centuries of European literature. (Swing by Cafe Reynard and you’ll likely find Martinez wearing a fox mask and Jacobowitz Teatum in a tail and fuzzy ears.) “Reynard is the person who I had to become in order to survive working in food service,” says Martinez. “It’s a persona that I adopted. It’s my Slim Shady. I’m very much drawn to trickster figures, and in Reynard I saw a symbol of working-class resistance. The trickster always pokes the big egos; they’re always outmatched in terms of raw power, so they have to be clever.”

“I’m just weird and was excited to be able to wear ears and a tail to work,” jokes Jacobowitz Teatum.

Behind the fox-inspired getup and big ideals, there’s some serious coffee sourcing and roasting going on. On the menu: a wide selection of small-batch coffees, roasted in-house, served via pour-over, cold brew, French press, and other methods, says Martinez, who’s particularly proud of a direct-trade relationship with a farm in Guatemala. “We try to be as ethical and conscientious about our sourcing as we possibly can.” There are some light snacks; think avocado toast, simple jammy toast, and Colombian-style arepas. But the real plan is to work with other food vendors, “especially queer POC and other marginalized groups, especially up-and-comers,” says Martinez, so there’s a lot more to come on that front. With Cafe Reynard’s regular cafe schedule starting this week, after a few weeks of limited-schedule trial runs, Martinez and Jacobowitz Teatum are figuring out a lot of the details as they go.

“It’s wild,” says Martinez. “This time six months ago, I had basically resigned myself to never working in food service again.” They had just been let go from a cafe job “under mysterious circumstances,” they say, after one day. “About the same time, my coffee-roasting hobby started taking off, and I was selling bags of coffee out of my backpack at poetry nights at the Cantab, semi-illegally.” Learning that they’d need to roast on commercial real estate to turn this into a legit business, “one thing led to another, and suddenly I found myself with an LLC and a board of advisors telling me to keep going. Long story short, I reached out to Idle Hands, met with [Idle Hands co-founder] Chris Tkach, and the rest is history.”

It started as just a place to roast: Martinez pays a bit of rent, utilities, and a small percentage of profits to use a supply closet at the brewery. But feels like a perfect fit, says Idle Hands social media and marketing manager Josh Deering, since “Idle Hands started out as the smallest brewery in the state, and Eddy’s probably the smallest coffee roaster in the state right now.” Martinez wasn’t planning to open a cafe for at least another year, they say, but Idle Hands brought up the idea of running one out of the taproom, and Cafe Reynard was born.

It’s a great deal for both parties, says Martinez. “They get more use out of the space, and we can do whatever the hell we like, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their business. They’ve been great partners.”

The brewery doesn’t really use the taproom space in the morning, says Deering, so this is a new way to get people inside and maximize use of the building. It’s the latest in Greater Boston’s current wave of bars, breweries, and commercial spaces that operate as cafes during the day. See, for example, Tilde, Cambridge’s new cafe-by-day, wine-bar-by-night, or the recently opened Jamaica Plain cafe Jadu, which will soon introduce wine bar service in the evenings, or Everett’s Short Path Distillery, which will soon have a cafe inside.

Cafe Reynard worker-owner Athena Jacobowitz Teatum at Idle Hands. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

A collaboration like this feels like a natural evolution for Idle Hands, as the Malden brewery seems to host more pop-ups than nearly any space in Greater Boston. (A peek at the events calendar shows Sim’s BBQ and Bocadillos both popping up multiple times in the coming weeks, not to mention other events like cribbage night and a “stitch ‘n’ bitch” craft session.) The pop-ups started sporadically when Idle Hands first moved into its Malden space almost a decade ago, says Deering, after an opening stint in Everett. It was mostly food trucks out in the parking lot—logistically a bit difficult since there was a separation between the beer and the food. But a year or two before COVID, things started really taking off when the brewery found vendors who could bring their setup right inside the taproom.

“When Idle Hands first opened in Everett 13 years ago,” says Deering, “all [a taproom] needed was a little draft system. You poured people two-ounce samples and hoped they left with a growler. Then we moved to Malden, and it was like, ‘Okay, now you need to have the full bar setup.’ And now, you need to have the full bar setup and food and events and this and that. We’re trying to adapt and change.”

It’s tough in the brewery world these days, says Deering, with lots of closures and mergers. “You have to give people a reason to keep coming out, and we’re trying to do that—one, with beer; two, with providing the community space; and three, with a ton of programming and events and great food trucks and vendors. We’re really trying to ingrain this place into the community.”

Says Martinez: “We’re following Idle Hands’ lead. We’re collaborating with as many people as possible, creating a third space.” Among those collaborations: the aforementioned pastry chef Kate Holowchik, whose Lionheart Confections doughnuts have earned a cult following over the past few years. (She’s popped up at Idle Hands herself quite a bit, too.) Doughnuts will be available at Cafe Reynard at least twice a week most weeks. “We would love to collaborate with anyone who shares our values and commitment to quality, and Kate very much does,” says Martinez. “I can’t believe we get to introduce people to Kate’s work. We get to see a lot of eyes light up. A lot of people say that it’s the best doughnut they’ve ever had, and we get to serve them—such an honor.”

Basically, Martinez wants to stick to the coffee and delegate everything else, while building community. “We could do everything ourselves and do it mediocre and spread ourselves thin, or we could collaborate with people who know what they are doing and are passionate about it,” they say. “It just makes good business sense. ‘Mutual aid is good for business’: That’s our whole motto.”

Idle Hands. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Cafe Reynard is open inside Idle Hands from 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Sunday and 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. 89 Commercial St., Malden, cafe-reynard.com, idlehandscraftales.com.