When chips and soda just won't do
Gateway Park café will offer scientists better options
Much as they might like to, the scientists and researchers at WPI's new Gateway Park biotechnology complex will not be subsisting solely on Cheetos and soda.
Lisa Sanders, wife of ECI Biotech founder Mitchell Sanders, recently signed a five-year lease in the building at 60 Prescott St., and plans to open a 1,500-square-foot coffee shop on the building's first floor later this summer.
The café will be called "Pi," Sanders said, in homage to the scientific work that will be going on around it.
"My husband and I were throwing around names, and Pi kind of fit a scientific place, a kinda nerdy place," Sanders said. "We just thought it was kind of a cute little phrase, so that's where it came from."
Currently in the build-out phase, Sanders hopes to have Pi open by Aug. 1.
Better than vending machines
The café will be an entirely new venture for Sanders, a longtime pre-school teacher at Salem Covenant Community Nursery School in Worcester. She will retire from teaching this month and devote herself full-time to the restaurant.
"This is something I've always wanted to do, and it's the best opportunity I've gotten," Sanders said. "My husband's office is right across the street, so it's right there, and they need a café there, so we're both helping each other out. It's a good fit."
The café, to be open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m., will only serve coffee and pastries at the outset, Sanders said, expanding to a full luncheon menu in the future. It will also feature desserts, such as birthday cakes, that patrons can pre-order. No pastry chef herself, Sanders said all the goodies will be supplied by yet-to-be-determined area bakeries. She said she is enjoying the tasting process.
"So far, everything has been so good," said Sanders.
The idea for the coffee shop came out of a conversation Sanders and her husband were having recently at a dinner party at the home of WPI President Dennis Berkey. Sanders said she assumed there would be some kind of cafeteria for the scientists at the new facility, but was surprised by Berkey's answer.
"He looked at me and said, ‘Well, there will be vending machines,'" Sanders recalled. "I told him, ‘You've got to be kidding.' He said that if I could come up with something better, show him. That was on a Friday night. I spent the weekend writing up a business plan and had it done by the following Tuesday. (Berkey) thought it was a great idea, and we've just been rolling with it since then."
Sanders said the café will feature access to Prescott Street and will have an outdoor patio with some seating space. She said she hopes it will attract patrons from the surrounding neighborhood, in addition to Gateway Park tenants.
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