Updated: Gorilla Coffee Closing Original Park Slope Location

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Gorilla Coffee will be closing its 97 5th Ave. location on Jan. 2, according to a note posted Friday on the shop's window. However, the business will keep its 472 Bergen St. location open, which started serving joe in 2013.

The news was first reported by Bklyner, and while it may come as a shock, it was apparently part of the company's plan for several years.

"On October 28, 2013 we opened 472 Bergen as our new Park Slope shop," the note read. "We intended to shift our sole Park Slope location at that time. We loved our 97 5th corner so much that we kept both locations for an additional 3 years...Know we kept this location the extra time because we linked seeing you all so much."

"As of January 2nd, 2017 we will finalize our original plan and have our Park Slope location at 472 Bergen," the note continued. "All your favorite staff will be there so you should head over and have some coffee with us."

The note that greeted guests inside Gorilla Coffee on Friday.

On Friday afternoon, Gorilla co-owner Carol McLaughlin told Patch that the closure wasn't because the shop was losing business.

The company is in the middle of a ten year lease at its Bergen location, McLaughlin said, and would have closed on 5th sooner, were it not for the fact that she's "sentimental" and is so emotionally attached to her original spot. She said the Jan. 2 closing date was set because the building's landlord wants to use the space for something else.

McLaughlin, who talked fast and joked freely, immediately started reminiscing about neighbors she's met over the years, since the coffee shop was founded in 2002.

"You have these amazing relationships in a one block radius, and it's hard to let that go," she said. Stories of customers started flowing forth — the woman who got a free drink after having her car stolen (it was recovered the next day), or the customer who kept adding to her macchiato order, every four minutes, for nearly half an hour.

Seeing recurring customers, McLaughlin said, was like receiving "that little gumball of joy" during her day at the store.

Carol McLaughlin inside Gorilla Coffee on Friday.

From even a brief conversation, McLaughling's dedication to her work was obvious.

"It's a lot of emotion to run a local business," she said. "You literally care about the staff, the customers."

That focus was one of the qualities Gorilla co-owner Darleen Scherer cited in 2010, following a mass resignation of staff that temporarily shuttered the business.

The seven employees that quit sent the New York Times an email reporting a "perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment," one attributed to McLaughlin.

“The training to be a barista is rigorous,” Scherer said of McLaughlin. "I don’t understand the perceived hostility. Everybody has a different learning curve and she respects that.”

But none of that history was evident on Friday. McLaughlin spoke fondly of employees who had been at Gorilla for seven years, and said she'll be keeping all of the 5th Avenue location's furniture, so strong is her attachment to it.

"Nothing's going to replace this thing," she said of the space. "Having a store is like having a kid. This is like the kid going off to college."

Keeping the empty nest syndrome metaphor going, the co-owner said she now has to find something else to occupy her time, and has indeed explored opening up another location (though it likely wouldn't be in Park Slope, she added). However, she said she's yet to find a space that feels right.

Asked if she had any plans for a closing celebration before Jan. 2, McLaughlin didn't hesitate.

"We're going to have stripping and there will be babies for sale of any size," she said, adding with a smile that the quote was something people who know her would expect her to say.

Gorilla's Bergen Street location.

Pictured at top: Gorilla Coffee's 5th Ave. location. Photos by John V. Santore