Tim Harty, The Business Times

On a busy Sunday morning, Jan. 26, just a few days after opening the door to Copeka Coffee’s new, expanded space to customers, co-owner Jana Joramo saw exactly what she wanted to see.

Large groups of people were able to stay at the coffee shop – or as Joramo prefers to call Copeka, a community cafe – and sit together.

Previously, it was common for Copeka’s space to be filled, and a group of four or more people might have to order drinks and/or food to go, or maybe exit without ordering and go elsewhere.

“When we weren’t as busy as we are now, we used to have a lot of different groups that would just meet here, Bible study groups and different groups from the college and maybe people getting together and studying,” said Joramo, who owns Copeka with her husband, Lee Joramo, and daughter Kyra Rossier. “And that still happens. We had a lot of people who would bring in games, Dungeons and Dragons, or other tabletop things, and they would be here.

“But now I think for the last little while they found it harder to come in. They would have to designate one person to come in and guard a table. Now, I just noticed on Sunday actually we had some people playing games again.”

More tables and more chairs means more people being able to enjoy Copeka’s friendly confines.

“This past Sunday, we had several large groups of people that came in, and they came specifically because they could meet. And they all went in there,” Joramo said, pointing to the new space, which approximately doubled Copeka’s footprint in the small commercial building in the 1000 block of N. Fifth St., between North and Belford avenues.

Copeka used to be confined to the unit listed as 1012 N. Fifth St., but it added 1010 next door, which was home to a psychiatry business until it moved to a new location.

Joramo estimated Copeka has 4,500 square feet now, more room to offer what it always has: specialty coffee and other drinks; pastries baked on site and a food menu that includes the extremely popular avocado toast; occasional live music; open-mic nights; poetry nights; study groups; and more.

And now it can offer a few new things.

Copeka now has two small conference rooms, much more storage space and another bathroom. One conference room can seat six people, and the other can seat eight.

“We’re looking at offering those up on websites where you look for meeting-room space and maybe you can reserve it,” she said, “and if it’s open and nobody’s using it, anybody can use it. So, there’s some privacy. It’s a quieter room.”

The storage is handy, because Copeka previously had to rent a U-Haul storage unit. During the run-up to the Covid pandemic in 2020 and thereafter, Joramo said, “We just stocked up on all sorts of things. And this actually allows us to stop having to do that. We had to rent extra space for storage before, and now we can store it here, and that’s great.”

Ultimately having room for anyone and everyone is what Joramo wants to provide, hence her characterization of Copeka as a community cafe.

Morgan McNair, a senior at Colorado Mesa University, said she comes to Copeka two or three times per week, usually to study, but she also catches open-mic nights, which she highly recommends that more people attend.

McNair welcomed the additional space, saying, “It’s pretty great. There’s a lot more seating, and the ambiance in here … it’s just a cool spot to study and hang out.”