COVID-19 claims another business, this time a downtown coffee and game shop

Two and half years after opening their Sente coffee shop, which had a focus on board games, Caitlin Doolittle and Thomas Koch have closed the downtown business.

“We were doing really, really well,” Koch said. “It’s just that running a business that’s so fundamentally reliant on close social interaction is difficult with COVID.”

He said, “America’s being hit worse than it looks like everywhere else, so, ‘Should we open?’ is the question we asked ourselves. The answer was ‘No,’ not until . . . there’s a solid solution or people aren’t dying by the thousands.”

The two considered some of the financial help that’s currently being offered to businesses in a variety of ways, but Koch said a lot of the money is money they would have to pay back.

“We had to make the decision . . . whether we would go in debt interminably for our business,” he said. “For us, it was about being a responsible business fiscally and ethically.”

They’re in negotiations with their landlord at the northwest corner of Douglas and Market. Koch said what happens with the contents of the business depends on how those negotiations go.

There’s a chance some of the games may go for sale on the Sente Facebook page at some point.

Koch said there’s also a chance the business may return. He hopes they one day can reopen.

“Yeah, absolutely we do.”

For now, they’re going to look for new jobs in what Koch calls “some of the least-promising environment that I’ve been in.”

This story was originally published May 19, 2020 at 12:52 PM.