Macon coffee shop is closing. But new business to open in same spot

Jittery Joe’s Coffee shop was the second business to open in Mercer Village nearly 10 years ago. But come Sunday night, it will close its doors.

Owner Howard Collins said it was time to move on.

“I’m not a spring chicken any more,” said Collins. “I’m over 75, so I just decided to turn it over to some younger Mercerians.”

Collins and his wife graduated from Mercer.

About 10 years ago, Mercer University President Bill Underwood mentioned to Collins that Mercer Village needed a coffee shop, he said. At the time, his son and wife owned a Jittery Joe’s in Alpharetta, “so we just got together and decided to put one at Mercer Village. We were the second business there.”

Ingleside Village Pizza was the first business in the Village, which was replaced by Sauced, another pizza shop.

Jittery Joe’s will close at about 4 p.m. on Sunday, or “while people want to hang out,” he said.

But coffee drinkers need not despair.

New owners Shane Buerster and Carter Varga plan to reopen it as Z Beans Coffee — the same name as their coffee bean business.

Buerster, a non-coffee drinker at the time, became interested in the coffee business when he went on a mission trip to Ecuador to earn course credits in economics and Spanish. He shared that story with The Telegraph in May.

“I ended up making a good friend named Arturo Penaretta Romero, and I just began importing coffee,” he said.

He’s been able to grow the coffee bean business throughout Macon and especially through the Mercer community. They bring in the green coffee beans and roast it here.

“The next step that I wanted to take was to continue creating opportunities for Ecuadorian coffee farmers by opening a coffee shop,” Buerster said. “My own personal mission is to bring as much coffee as I can in from Ecuador and sell it here in the states. ... And obviously this is a great step in doing so. We sure hope to have many more coffee shops around the Middle Georgia area.”

Buerster and Varga, who graduated in May, have been talking with Collins about purchasing the shop for about eight months.

They plan to change the decor by partnering with other Macon businesses to make it a “fun, inviting and cozy atmosphere,” he said. While the menu won’t change much, the hours will be a little longer, 6 a.m.- 9 p.m. — at least until they can determine if customers come in later.

They hope to reopen the coffee shop by Aug. 27, which is about a week after university classes begin.

And they won’t have to search for workers. They are going to keep the employees now at Jittery Joe’s.

“We agreed to compensate them for that time off,” until Z Beans Coffee opens, Buerster said. “Ultimately, we want them to appreciate Z Beans as much as we do.”