Vienna's Caffe Amouri Welcomes Customers Inside After 16 Months

VIENNA, VA — Like many small business owners, Michael Amouri has dealt with his fair share of questions surrounding when the right time to open his doors back up to customers coming out of the coronavirus pandemic would be.

For the past month, the owner of Caffé Amouri has sensed the timing was coming — so much that he said he could taste it. On Monday, the local coffee shop welcomed its doors again to the public after limiting its business to takeout only for the past 16 months.

The reopening was a long time in coming, but Amouri said in a recent social media post that from the beginning, he always had a plan that he knew he could live with.

“All along, since last year, I made a commitment to follow not just the science, but also my heart,” Amouri said in a video that was posted to the coffee shop’s Facebook page in early May. “I pretty much decided the numbers (of COVID-19 cases) had to reach a certain threshold and I wanted to get my staff fully vaccinated.”

In the video, Amouri said he has invested in a high-tech air filtration and purification system to ensure that he would be ready for customers to safety return to his business. Amouri targeted mid-June to reopen to the public and thanked community members for their patience and said he wanted everyone back inside the local coffee shop as much as they wanted to return.

Customers who are not fully vaccinated and staff members at Caffé Amouri, located at 107 Church Street NE, will still be required to wear face-coverings, Masks are optional for customers who are fully vaccinated, but Amouri said he would prefer everyone wear a mask. Seating will be socially distanced and only be opened in a portion of the shop. Customers will be limited to 30 minutes inside to allow more people to be able to enjoy returning to the business.

In a social media post on Monday, Amouri celebrated being able to allow customers back inside the shop for the first time since the pandemic began. He acknowledged that doing some came with a combination of joy and sadness considering everything that took place since the pandemic began last spring.

“Joy to see your smiling (masked:) ) faces once again,” he wrote on Facebook on Monday. “Sadness for what has transpired....the losses that so many experienced...personal loss of a loved one, losing a business or a job, the loss of experiences that make life special.

“But life goes on....with LOVE with JOY and with APPRECIATION.”