A look at the unique history of Donkey Coffee and Espresso | News

The shop has been operating for almost 20 years. Over those two decades, countless Athens residents have passed through and even become regulars at the eccentric coffee shop. However, many frequent Donkey patrons may not be aware of its humble beginnings.

Christopher Pyle, 53, founder and owner of Donkey, isn’t originally from Ohio, instead moving to Athens by way of Richmond, Virginia and West Hartford, Connecticut. He started attending Ohio University in 1988, but the move to Southeast Ohio was such a major culture shock that he wanted to leave school. However, by the end of the year he had grown to absolutely love it, and described his life in Athens as an incredible journey.

Pyle claims to be “a huge music geek”. He plays bass and performs in a band called “The Wild Honeybees,” and also records music in his spare time. He and his wife, Angie, were married in 1995 and adopted both of their children, Oliver and Ell.

As someone living in Athens, Ohio, being part of the community is important to Pyle. Supporting local organizations such as Good Works Inc. or Rural Action Inc. and trying to make changes in the community for the better is something that he strives for.

Before opening Donkey, the Pyles worked in ministry for about 10 years.

“We absolutely loved it, but near the end we started getting burnt out,” said Pyle. “We’d wanted to do something like a coffee shop for a while, so we just went in that direction.”

The Pyles wanted to do a job they genuinely desired to do, not just open some little shop selling trinkets. Instead, they wanted to open a business that had a common place that harbored community, social justice, music and art.

One of the first choices they made was to make sure their coffee was fair trade – a practice where companies and people buy products from developing countries and pay them a fair amount for their efforts. Fair trade coffee is around three times as expensive to purchase compared to regular coffee. However, this was an expense they were willing to cover.

“We just thought ‘man, we should just do this right from the beginning,’” Pyle said.

The Pyles choose to buy their coffee from a fair trade company called Dean’s Beans. Pyle said that, through Dean’s Beans’ business practices, he’s seen entire communities come out of poverty. For all products Donkey produces, whether it be coffee or merchandise, its main goal is for it to always be fair trade and certified sweatshop-free.

Before Donkey was established in the building, a business called “Athens Office Supply” occupied the space. A memento from the original owners, a printing press, still sits in the basement.

The building itself is quite old. The front of it was constructed in the 1860s, and for a period of roughly eight to nine years, the roof had around 20 different leaks. Pyle described taking care of the leaks like playing a game of “whack-a-mole;” they would fix one leak and another would spring up right after.

Donkey wasn’t always the bustling and successful business most Athens citizens know it as. Conversely, the coffee shop struggled for the first few years. Pyle claimed that going by statistics, they probably should’ve been closed within six months of opening.

Around its fourth or fifth year of operation, Ohio Magazine wrote an article claiming Donkey was the best coffee shop in Ohio. The Pyles began integrating that claim into their advertising, and after that they slowly started making money. In Donkey’s fourth year, the Pyles started to break even with their cost-to-revenue ratio, and by the fifth year they were making a real profit.

Pyle said the hardest part of running a brand-new coffee shop was actually the yearlong process of preparing Donkey for business. More recently, however, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down many businesses. Pyle said it was a massive problem for them when it first hit, to the point that they had to let go of all staff members but one to stay afloat.

“It sucked, I cried when that happened,” he said.

The only people working in Donkey for a lengthy and stressful two months were Pyle’s wife, children and one employee. They refused to let the shop go down and lose everything they had worked so hard for. Eventually, once COVID restrictions were lessened a little bit, they were able to hire anyone back who was waiting for the job.

As a boss and business owner, loving his employees is most important to Pyle, which is why letting them go during COVID was so difficult. He had experiences in previous retail positions, and he mentioned how most managers ran their businesses with fear rather than with love, leaving their employees stressed and angry. Pyle decided he would run his business differently, by treating his employees with encouragement rather than relying on fear to motivate them.

Other than being the owner, Pyle only has to do a handful of other small jobs at Donkey. He attributes this to the great management team and great employees in his shop. He said there is no way he and Angie could be the ones working in the shop for the entire day, especially since Donkey opens in the early morning and closes at midnight. Having such an amazing team doing their jobs lets the Pyles rest worry-free.

The coffee shop owner tries to hire people who already love Donkey. People do apply for jobs, but sometimes he asks people outright if they would like to work there. He also tries to hire his employees based on character rather than skill sets. Pyle explained that skills can be taught much easier than character can, but part of learning to work at Donkey includes learning about character and conflict resolution.

Autumn Koehler, a current Donkey employee, said her work experience was really nice. She had worked for numerous businesses, including some fast food positions. She said Donkey was a different atmosphere from her previous jobs, and applied with the fair trade practices and unique atmosphere in mind. Koehler felt like she has been treated fairly and respected during her time at Donkey. On days where she feels overwhelmed with all her duties and has to call off work, she said the Pyles were caring and understanding.

Another Donkey employee, Charlotte Dunlap, had worked at Donkey for around two months. She said it has been her favorite job, and enjoyed the interaction with both the customers and her coworkers. As far as the work, Dunlap described it as good and busy work, and she has felt no need to complain. Because both her dad and older brother attended Ohio University, she has a nostalgic memory of Donkey and wanted to work there because of it.

The biggest influence for Donkey’s decorative style mostly came from Pyle’s own personality. People can get a good idea of who Pyle and his wife are by just taking a stroll through the different rooms inside. “It’s just an outgrowth of what we like and what we’re about,” said Pyle.

Other inspirations have come from people; Pyle spoke about being inspired by “Punk rock and Jesus.” He listened to punk rock during his high school and college years, and some of the messages the genre fostered were justice and thoughtfulness, and that got Pyle to think about his life and what was important to him. He was also inspired by people like Bono, the lead singer for the band U2. Bono used his influence as a celebrity to serve the poor, and Pyle is a big fan of that. Now, he’s able to use Donkey as a way of serving the community.

Before the big room where performances happen, there’s the space Pyle has dubbed as the “justice room.” Anyone walking through or sitting there can pick up pamphlets for organizations and nonprofits supporting justice, ranging from big groups like Amnesty International to local groups such as Good Works Inc.

Inside the bathrooms, large chalkboards spread across the walls. This was Pyle’s idea, he liked the thought of giving people a way to just speak what was on their mind. Usually, they do not have trouble with Donkey patrons abusing their chalkboard powers, but on the rare occasion they do, management could simply erase it. Donkey is a private business, so legally they can decide what people can and cannot write, but free speech is more important to them. They do not erase it unless it is something truly hateful.

Wrapping around the wall above the steps leading to the second floor, there is a painted mural with many recognizable faces from the music scene. Pyle hired his friend Kevinn Pelham Drake, another Athens…