Sweet_ness 7 Café owner expecting to sell

Sweet_ness 7 Cafe owner Prish Moran expects to sell the long-time gathering place on Lafayette Avenue and Grant Street.

By Tommy Corsi and Ryan Williams 
           On the corner of Grant Street and Lafayette Avenue, a grand brick building is glowing with the artistic mural below the blue awning that symbolizes the Sweet_ness 7 Café. To pull open the ornate front door reveals the home-style, old-fashioned space filled with the scent of coffee brewing and food sizzling on the flat-top behind the counters.

           The owner of Sweet_ness 7 cafe and The Tabernacle, Prish Moran, is looking to sell the building that has been the longtime home of her two businesses.
           Moran will continue to own both businesses and the current management will still carry out the day-to-day operations as usual until any further progress is made in terms of a sale. They hope to keep business running smoothly throughout the course of the sale when one is made.
           Moran opened the cafe in 2008 within the Victorian-era building that she purchased and successfully restored it to its now current artistic state that it has become known for today.
           The renovated building in its current state represents the creation that Moran had envisioned 12 years ago when she purchased the building.
           While 220 Grant St. is home to the Sweet_ness 7 Café, the building accommodates more than just coffee lovers and the early-morning crowds.
           “It is kind of like a conglomerate. The cafe has always been the anchor point for everything, but the storefronts and the apartments upstairs add to it all,” Steven Zaionz, café general manager, said.

Steven Zaionz says it's business as usual ahead of the possible sale of the cafe.

           The building includes renovated apartments and storefronts along with the Tabernacle and the Sweet_ness 7 café for which it is most knownThe renovations included turning office spaces upstairs into apartments, and completely restoring the area that is now known as the Tabernacle, the event space next door to the cafe.
           “I hesitate to say much about the selling of the place, because we don’t really know much at this point,” Zaionz said. “I think (Moran) is just ready to move on from the business side of things, step back and spend more time with her family."
           There has been no public discussion of when the change of ownership is planned to occur, and at this time no potential buyers have even been identified. It has only just recently been discovered that Moran now has plans to sell the building at some point in the future.
           It is said that Moran hopes to sell the building along with her business to someone who will continue to carry on the legacy of her empire and continue to serve the community in a similar fashion as she has throughout the years.
           The cafe can be seen as what was the beginning of a movement that brought a flux of businesses to the Grant Street area.
           “After Prish opened this spot up you really saw other people start taking an interest in the neighborhood and starting their own small businesses around this area,” Zaionz said.
           The café has become a relied-upon neighborhood gathering place, so regulars such as Alaysa Dale, a Virginia Street resident, are hopeful that new owners will continue to operate it as it has been.

 Dale, on her impressions of Sweet_ness 7:

https://soundcloud.com/thomas-corsi-624649016/exactly-what-we-need-1

           “She has owned the spot for as long as I have been going there, which has been over the past four or five years,” Dale said. “The place is pretty unique because of the focus from around this area she had put into it. But I have faith she will keep it in good hands.”  

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