In the spring of 2024, Chautauqua Institution announced that it was moving coffee service from the Gazebo located at the corner of MIller and Roberts Avenues to the adjacent Brick Walk Cafe.

The most important thing to know is that there are no plans to remove the coffee gazebo building. We will be figuring out the best use for it going forward, but we are NOT taking it down.

The fact is our food and beverage team has struggled more significantly over the past several years with deteriorating conditions in the gazebo that are not easily fixed, especially as demands for coffee service have changed. Our modern coffee culture has outgrown the facility, which has significant infrastructure and environmental challenges. You’ll probably recall that last summer those issues interrupted the business multiple times, creating service dissatisfaction. We’re also concerned about working conditions for the staff who had to share the space with too many bees and endure too many plumbing problems, and of course, to a certain extent, the resulting revenue losses are concerning. We are moving the coffee service inside the Brick Walk Cafe to keep the amenity available in the same general location with ample outdoor seating available for socializing.

As an aside, we recently learned that some Chautauquans believe that the staff who previously worked in the Gazebo were Starbucks employees. They were not. All staff who previously worked in the Gazebo were employees of the Athenaeum Hotel, which previously had a service agreement with Starbucks to serve their products. All staff who now work at the Brick Walk Cafe are also Athenaeum Hotel employees. The Athenaeum Hotel is a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary of the not-for-profit Chautauqua Institution.