LEWISTON – It’s been a satisfying run, but at the end of business on Saturday, Just Joan’s cafe is closed for good.
“In a way the decision money-wise was easy, but emotionally, it was hard,” said Joan Pelletier, who started the cafe/bakery in her home. “We’ll miss everyone and want to thank people for their support for the past five years.”
Pelletier opened Just Joan’s on Lisbon Street in 2001, sharing space with a cyber cafe, before moving into her own downtown storefront. She also maintained another location inside Mr. Paperback bookstore in the Promenade Mall. In May 2004 she closed her downtown cafe to concentrate exclusively in the mall.
But when gas prices started to skyrocket this spring, she found fewer and fewer customers making the trek for her homemade breakfast or lunch.
“As gas prices went up, we bottomed out,” she said. “People needed to save money and began brown bagging it. We couldn’t sustain the hit.”
She and her husband, Dan, are selling the cafe’s equipment. They’ve decided not to consider reopening or catering from home. Just Joan’s bakery did a brisk business during the holidays, especially with dessert and meat pie orders. Pelletier said she’s had a few customers ask for her home address because they want to make private orders.
But she said she’s finished. In fact, she’s looking for work in the food service or retail fields.
And despite having to close, she’s cheerful about her experiment with entrepreneurship. The business was completely self-funded.
“Basically we had no working capital. We financed everything ourselves, often on a shoestring and a prayer,” she said with a laugh. “That shoestring frayed, and we’d knot it back up and keep going.”
Management at Mr. Paperback said the bookstore is hoping to find another cafe to serve its customers.
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