To the cheers of more than 50 people crowded into Sylvia’s Coffee last Friday morning, co-owner Michael Homeier cut the ceremonial red ribbon, marking the long-awaited official opening of Eatonton’s first downtown coffee shop in years.
“It was kind of overwhelming,” Michael admitted as he and his (also co-owner) wife, Diana Homeier, started cleaning up shortly after 2 p.m., more than five hours after starting to serve a steady stream of gourmet coffee-starved customers.
“We were expecting a decent turnout because people have been very kind and supportive and enthusiastic,” he continued. “But everybody has a busy life and trying to get a bunch of folks here for a little ribbon cutting with the Chamber of Commerce and Eatonton Main Street, and having it in the middle of people’s morning, you just don’t know if that’s going to be something that’s going to get folks to bother. But they sure did.”
Michael, a practicing lawyer, and Diana, a doctor, moved to Eatonton in 2019, purchasing Panola Hall, the historical, white-columned home across the road from the local library.
Legend has it Panola Hall is haunted by the ghost of a young woman, “Sylvia,” who supposedly shows herself only to those of the highest pedigree. Homeier admits he and Diana have never seen her. However, they did honor her legacy with the naming of Sylvia’s, A Supernatural Coffee Bar.
“Sylvia is famous. People are always coming up to us and saying their great-great-grandfather knew Sylvia, or that they’ve seen her when they were a kid, things like that all the time,” Michael said. “It seemed only natural to name the coffee bar in her honor.”
To prepare for Sylvia’s opening, both of the Homeiers traveled to Italy last May to learn the barista business at the Mokaflor Espresso Academy, an all-purpose coffee roasting/equipment/ retail/training company.
“It was a great education on all sorts of important things, but the most important thing they taught us is it all starts with a good coffee. You’ve got to have good coffee,” Michael explained. “And one of the things we learned about was how to find good coffee.
“So, when we came home, we went looking for it here. We tried a lot of different places knowing we wanted a local roaster to source our beans. We went and tried all the roasters around in a pretty good radius and by far Oconee Roasters up in Madison was our favorite, so that’s all we serve here.”
Mokaflor also emphasized the need for good dairy and baked products, too, so after a couple of similar quests, the Homeiers settled on Rock House Farm and Creamery in Newborn and Coasties Bakery in Milledgeville.
Michael stressed it’s important to both himself and Diana to support local suppliers because Sylvia’s is as much about creating community as it is about turning a profit.
“Every aspect of our business, we want it to help the community grow,” he insisted. “And so, everything that people get when they come here supports local business, either directly at ours or indirectly through our suppliers. But the fourth thing, the ‘quadfecta’ I guess, would be when we are able to grow to the point that we can afford to create jobs by hiring people, too.
“Eventually, the idea would be that we could step away and provide jobs, and in a small community like this, you don’t need hundreds or thousands of jobs to make a difference. One job, two jobs, can make a difference. We could create easily two jobs here if the business grows and the support locally continues to be earned. And people are generous and supportive around here. They were really crazy supportive today and we were really honored by that, really encouraged.”
For the foreseeable future, Sylvia’s Coffee (111 S. Jefferson Ave., Eatonton) will be open Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., with potential extra hours in coordination with select Georgia Writers Museum events.