Photograph courtesy Spring Grove Coffee
On a rainy Saturday morning in January, a high school student was working on an unusual school assignment: Walk up to a stranger, anywhere, and start a conversation. He couldn’t have picked a better spot for the task than Spring Grove Coffee; this mom-and-pop coffee shop is the friendliest place in town.
In fact, before the kid approached me, I had already myself met some new people here. Seated with my cortado and a slice of homemade apple-caramel bundt cake, I exchanged a handshake with Patrick, who runs the solar company Go Sun, as he table-hopped, cup in hand. Sadiq, in a colorful knit skullcap, minding his three young children, had leaned over from his nearby table to compliment my hair. I learned he’s a peer-support specialist at the VA. If there was music emanating from the espresso machine or stereo speakers, you couldn’t hear it, because everyone in the shop was chatting, from four little girls playing with chess pieces to a gaggle of gray-hairs assembling a puzzle. The one person absorbed by his laptop was the outlier.
“This place is like Prozac,” says Jeanne, a Clifton entrepreneur who snagged the last available seat beside me. “If I’m having a bad day, I come in and feel better.”
After we catch up, she, too, meets Sadiq, and they launch into their own conversation.
Such conviviality is exactly what Spring Grove Coffee aimed for when it opened in late 2024. “We’re community first, coffee second,” says co-owner Susan Moore. Adds her husband Jerry, “Community, sustainability, and generosity.”
The “generosity” piece of the mission is manyfold. First, it’s a donation-based establishment. The Moores believe that a tight budget shouldn’t bar anyone from dropping in for a frothy flavored latte.
“There are angels who will put a $20 bill in the donation box, and there are kids who come regularly for cocoa and cakes and never pay,” Susan says. “And that’s OK. As my daughter says, it’s what we signed up for.”
Not only does the couple volunteer their time, not taking a salary, but their four adult children helped set up and run the place. One son even went in with them to buy the L-shaped 1910 brick building that houses the shop.
And finally, Spring Grove Coffee puts money back into the immediate neighborhood, looking no further than the 45232 zip code for its baristas, the artists whose work hangs on the walls, and the musicians, poets, and crafters who animate monthly evening events. “We’re not just local,” Susan explains. “We’re micro-local.”
Photograph courtesy Spring Grove Coffee
Spring Grove Coffee is the only place for a handcrafted fuel-up in this historic neighborhood bordered by Northside, College Hill, Winton Hills, and St. Bernard. The area was called Winton Place until 2007 when the new designation Spring Grove Village distinguished it from Cincinnati’s other Winton place-names and underscored its proximity to Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum. Architect Samuel Hannaford (who designed Music Hall and City Hall) was its mayor from 1882-1903, before it was annexed by the city.
Spring Grove Coffee fills a void for a local hangout; the only other public-facing spots on the “commercial strip” of East Epworth Avenue today are a daycare, a church, and Sally’s Treats & Treasures (a groovy spot itself for secondhand cookware).
The Moores, who met on a religious retreat, have been deeply involved in neighborhood affairs since moving there in 1984. The desire for a brick-and-mortar coffeeshop was “brewing for a long time,” says Jerry, “excuse the pun.”
With plants, abundant natural light, colorful paintings, and cushions on mismatched chairs, the shop is comfortable without being bougie.
Photograph courtesy Spring Grove Coffee
And while the pillar of the place is community, coffee isn’t an afterthought. Viva is the fair-trade and mission-driven partner. Its arabica beans, from Honduras, are stellar stuff (Viva was the People’s Choice winner in the “coffee roaster” category at the Cincinnati Coffee Festival in 2024 and 2025).
Word about the unique vibe at SGC is getting out, but the Moores, who both hold day jobs, aren’t hoping to make the shop their full-time business. Instead of becoming a citywide epicenter for coffee, they’d rather see other independent places like theirs in each neighborhood creating their own endemic scenes.
“Spring Grove Village is the city’s best-kept secret,” Susan says, “and a lot of us like it that way.”
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