Green Line Cafe

by Green Line co-owner Douglas Witmer
In the fall of 2001, my brother-in-law Dan and I were joking around about our lack of prospects for long-term employment.  He was doing freelance social science research and I was pursuing my career as an artist, supporting myself with a string of museum and gallery jobs.  We were joking at the time, but really we seriously wanted to find a way to make sustainable livelihoods for ourselves and our families.

University City in Philadelphia was a neighborhood with a lot of positive things in the works.  We had lived there, around the corner from each other, for a couple of years.  Even with three universities, two hospitals, and a great community all around, there was surprisingly no coffee house scene.  We had to walk 20 minutes just to get to the nearest Starbucks!

One day we noticed that the building on Baltimore at 43rd Street was up for sale.  For as long as I could remember it had been a flower shop, but by then it seemed to be closed more than open.  Dan said, “hey there’s our coffee shop.”  We laughed about it at first, but then we realized what a great idea it was.  The old Victorian corner store, with big windows facing to the park across the street would be a great café.  Dan checked it out the next day.  And we bought the building in December.

In January of 2002 we began work on renovating the storefront.  There was quite a bit more to do than we had ever imagined.  When we weren’t working on the building we were visiting cafes all around the city and taking notes—forming our vision for what by now we were calling The Green Line Café, named for the trolley line that went right past our door.

We both had connections to Central America.  We visited coffee plantations and saw working conditions first-hand.  From this experience we felt a responsibility to make our business model promote sustainable global economics. We knew we would serve only organic fair trade certified coffees, and we found our roaster in Equal Exchange.  We also found a great organic tea supplier in the family-owned Divinitea.  We procured our pastries from Philadelphia’s famous LeBus Bakery (it actually began in a bus in our neighborhood) and our bagels from Redhouse Bagels.  We bypassed Coca-Cola and Pepsi entirely, and hooked up with Forest Park, a small “micro-brew” soda company in Delaware, to produce our own Green Line brand of old-school sodas.  And we worked to find other local independent suppliers whenever we could.

It took us a year to finish the renovations.  We had paper over the windows and everybody was trying to check out what was going on.  We finally opened on January 20, 2003.  I remember it was still dark outside that morning when our first customer came into the shop at 7:15.  I guess I was expecting some kind of fanfare—maybe making a fancy drink.  By contrast, the guy ordered a large coffee to go.  It was almost like he had been a regular customer for some time.

We’ve been open for a couple of years now.  We opened a second location, “The Other Green Line” in the winter of 2005.