Braintree Cafe Temporarily Closed After Car Goes Through Wall

At about 11 a.m. Saturday morning, just a few minutes after a crowd of customers left the M&M Cafe in Braintree Square, owner Dorsey Connolly heard a loud crash and looked up to see the back end of a Toyota Camry sticking through the wall.

An elderly man, mistaking the accelerator pedal for the brake, had driven backward into the cafe and "made me a drive-through," Connolly joked in a follow-up interview Tuesday, disappointed by the forced closure of his coffee shop but happy that no one was injured.

"He couldn't have timed it any better," Connolly said. 

M&M Cafe was shut-down Saturday by the building inspector because of extensive damage. The crash shifted load-bearing beams, cracked the walls and ceiling and destroyed part of a brick wall. It even left a crack in the newly-painted wall of the massage therapy center next door.

An engineer will survey the damage this week and Connolly will be able to start rebuilding once he gets the go-ahead from the town. The cafe will be closed at least a week. He hopes to re-open by a week from this coming Sunday, which will be M&M's one-year anniversary.

Connolly and his wife Katherine opened M&M Cafe at 25 Elm St. last fall. They transformed the former Minutemen Hobby Shop into the cafe they'd talked about owning for years.