by Bailey White
Staff Writer
Joe Chinnis is taking orders. And this Thanksgiving, pumpkin and white chocolate cheesecake could replace sweet potato pie on the dessert plate.
In a few weeks, Chinnis is opening the Cheesecake Café at the corner of Hendricks Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard.
“I’m hoping to open by Dec. 20,” said Chinnis, adding he’s taking phone orders for holiday cheesecakes until the store opens.
The Cheesecake Café coming to San Marco is actually a franchise. There’s one in Ponte Vedra Beach that opened a year and a half ago and another one on Baymeadows Road that has been open for about a month.
“It was created by a company called Beaches Biz out of Ponte Vedra,” said Chinnis. “I’m actually the first lessee.”
Chinnis’ store will open in a building shared by Wilson & Wilson Optical and the Luxe Lounge beauty shop. He’s taking over space occupied by the recently closed Inspiration furniture store.
“I’m trying to break the ground for more walking traffic,” said Chinnis, who chose the San Marco location about three months ago. “I liked all the windows that look out to Atlantic [Boulevard]. I frequent many places in San Marco and I’m familiar with the clientele of the area. It’s just the right place to be.”
This isn’t Chinnis’ first foray into a franchise. He and a partner once owned two Larry’s Giant Subs restaurants.
“Franchising is a great way to get into business,” said Chinnis. “The owner has already figured out the equipment you need, the accounting system, the product set up. It’s appealing because a lot of work has been done and the product is already on the market.”
Still, Chinnis will add his own touch to his cafe, which will seat about 50.
“I plan on at least four or five sofas and some soft chairs in addition to table seats,” he said. Chinnis is also planning to take advantage of the stage area in the 1,500 square-foot building. “I’d like to get music groups to play and to maybe schedule poetry readings. Something artsy. I want it to have a ‘Friends’ feel, so that people can come and hang out.”
Of course, the cheesecake will be the main reason to visit the shop.
Chinnis said the product he’ll be selling rivals authentic New York cheesecake — the kind he was accustomed to growing up in New Jersey.
“There, the cheesecake is thick and dry,” he said. “You have to have a cup of coffee with it. These cakes are moist.”
The flavor list is extensive — 40 different kinds of cheesecake are available for order and the store will rotate flavors available by the slice. Besides standards such as strawberry, blueberry and Oreo, there are speciality cheesecakes made with frangelica on roasted almond crust and banana nut rum on a roasted pecan crust. There is even cheesecake-on-a-stick. A piece of raspberry flavored cheesecake is coated in a hard chocolate shell and served frozen on a stick.
The man in the kitchen is chef Michael Callahan, who prepares each cheesecake in the Ponte Vedra Beach store, using the same ingredients as they would in New York, but baking it differently.
“That’s the secret,” said Chinnis.
Because the restaurant will open at 6:30 a.m., Chinnis will accommodate the breakfast crowd with Barnie’s tea and coffee and baked items such as muffins, which will also be prepared by Callahan.
“These are tall, good muffins,” said Chinnis.
The store will be open until 9 p.m. during the week, and until 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. on the weekend.
According to Chinnis, there isn’t too much work to do in the month before he opens.
“There is probably about 10 days worth of solid work to do,” he said.
In addition to installing the counters, which shouldn’t take long, Chinnis is planning on adding two bathrooms and closing off a door that links his store to Luxe Lounge.
The improvements should be relatively easy for a man who has done similar work on his home in Arlington.
A computer programmer by day, Chinnis will spend a lot of nights and weekends at his new store, which he hopes is the first of several cafes he will open.
“I’m planning on partnering with my sister in Gainesville to open more stores. I think it will be a good market. College kids drink a lot of coffee,” he said.