Flaneur at Saint Mary’s: Off the Avenue cafe

Last semester, I began working at Saint Mary’s College as an adjunct lecturer. On the days I teach, I board the No. 17 — the campus sweep — at Notre Dame’s library circle to get to Saint Mary’s. I get off the bus after it crosses SR 933 and walk a quarter mile north to Spes Unica Hall, home to the English department. As fate would have it, my office in Spes — as the building is colloquially known — is on the same floor as a cafe called Off the Avenue. So, for better or worse, I’ve made the spot a regular haunt of mine. Usually, I stay for about an hour to grade papers, read through the required course materials for the day and lesson plan before heading back to my office. The regular caffeine and sugar fixes, as well as the background chatter, get me through the mornings and prime me for giving lectures in the afternoons. By doing my flaneur thing and inadvertently eavesdropping on conversations around me, I’ve gotten a better sense of the vibe at Saint Mary’s, which I knew little about before the start of the academic year.

Off the Avenue is a quaint, if modestly sized, coffee shop. It sits on an inner terrace that overlooks Spes’s first-floor lobby, where students regularly congregate to study and socialize. Even though the cafe itself is small, the space is visually integrated with the building’s expansive first floor, and the foot traffic shuttling to and from classrooms and offices on the second floor makes it feel busy even when it’s not. Founded in 2023 by seven marketing majors, the cafe is entirely staffed by students. There are ten baristas and two student managers, and business professor Jim Rogers serves as their faculty sponsor. According to Rogers, whom I met by chance one afternoon in the cafe, the students do a fantastic job of running the coffee shop. After only a year in business, they were able to pay off a $24,000 startup loan given to them by the college. They do well enough that they can afford to donate a portion of their profits to local nonprofits such as St. Margaret’s House, a day center for women and children in South Bend. 

When it comes to the drinks, Off the Avenue has a regular menu and a seasonal menu. If you read my column, you know I’m not one for sugary lattes. I keep it simple: drip coffees, cappuccinos and americanos. Though my first two cappuccinos at Off the Avenue were passable, the third — a warm, milky mess with little to no hint of espresso — was not. My go-to, then, became the drip coffee, which is actually quite good. The coffee is from Uncommon Coffee Roasters in Saugatuck, Michigan, which the founders chose after taking a trip to their facilities and tasting their coffee and teas. Uncommon also provides the syrups, the cold brew kegerator and maintenance for the espresso machines. They also train the baristas and managers.

All of the pastries come from Ragamuffin Bakery of South Bend. At the beginning of the fall semester, there was a supply issue. For whatever reason, Ragamuffin wasn’t delivering enough pastries, so Off the Avenue would run out of food routinely. Eventually, though, the managers ironed out the issue, and they were stocked Monday through Friday, at least from what I saw. Personally, discovering the Ragamuffin connection was a blast from the past. For roughly four years, I was a regular patron at Ragamuffin’s downtown South Bend location, which opened around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was especially fond of their sliced strawberry cake, a seasonal offering in the spring made with regionally sourced strawberries. I’d go there so often that I annoyed the girls working the register, by the looks on their faces. But the owner, Abby, seemed to like me. Then, somehow, through sheer will, I managed to break the spell. I swore off Ragamuffin, and that was that. But now Ragamuffin is back in my life. She won’t kill me, but she’ll give me diabetes if I don’t watch myself. And she’ll take my money, too. The least expensive pastry at Off the Avenue is a modestly sized cookie, which costs $4.50, while the most expensive item is the croissant, which runs $7. I was never much a fan of the croissants or muffins from Ragamuffin, but the cookies are good. Still, I miss the strawberry cake and some of the other pastries owner Abby came up with before closing her storefront last year. Those more sophisticated offerings are not available at Off the Avenue, at least not at the moment. But that may yet be an area for improvement.

Given my aversion to sugary coffee drinks, I can’t speak directly to the quality of the lattes at Off the Avenue. I can tell you, however, from doing my flaneur thing — also known as eavesdropping — that some of their most popular drinks seem to be the brown bear and the skunk tail lattes. The first is a brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso, while the second is infused with white chocolate and mocha powder. Their winter menu boasts a peppermint mocha latte and a gingerbread chai, though the tiramisu mocha latte is a crowd-pleaser, from what I hear. Beyond that, I leave it to you to explore. Or not. Stick to your Keurigs or whatever. Or the Starbucks closest to you. Plebes. Until next time. OG out.