He’s owned the building and has been working on plans for what he’d do with it since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, developer Brian Cunningham — along with his wife, sister and brother-in-law — has finally opened the cocktail bar that many of their friends and followers have long been anticipating.
Goldfinch Coffee and Cocktails quietly opened on Wednesday in an old service station building at 1640 E. Waterman: That’s on the northwest corner of Waterman and Hydraulic, in the Hyde Park neighborhood. The new business is not far from Central Standard Brewing and White Crow Cider.
Goldfinch serves coffee, craft cocktails, classic cocktails, beer, wine and mixed drinks. It also has several breakfast items and is developing a menu of heavy appetizers for the evening hours. It even has a coffee drive-through that’s open from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. daily.
Cunningham — who co-owns the bar with his wife, Amy; his sister, Molly Shawver, and her husband, John Shawver — said the owners wanted the place to feel like a hotel bar, which has a different vibe in the morning, the afternoon, the early evening and late at night. The owners, he said, were inspired by hotel bars in New York and New Orleans that they’d visited…