Doug Petrie, who has operated the Millennium Cafe since 2001, has decided to retire at the end of the year.  The Library Foundation has started the process of looking for a new vendor.

A request for qualifications was just posted on the Library website at https://tscpl.org/about/request-for-proposals.  Prospective vendors have until September 6 to submit their qualifications in order to be considered.  The review process and follow-up interviews will take the majority of the month of September, and we hope to have a decision by October.  We plan to have the new vendor take over the cafe beginning January 2, 2020.

Staffing the cafe is the responsibility of the vendor.  The current cafe employees are Doug’s employees and not the library’s.  We will certainly recommend the current staff to the new vendor, however it will be the vendor’s decision on who to hire in the cafe.

The name of the cafe will remain The Millennium Cafe.  The furniture and equipment is provided by the library and the Foundation, and therefore it will all stay.  However, we will be looking at replacing and updating the furniture and the decor in the future.

We have been extremely fortunate to have had Doug leading the cafe for almost 20 years.  It is extremely rare for a library cafes to have that level of consistency.  This will be a major change for everyone, but we think we have a good process to find a suitable replacement.