Cafe Allez announces bakery pop-ups at Fancy’s Pizza in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — A European-style café is getting its start with pop-ups in southeast Cedar Rapids.

Cafe Allez, a new concept first announced in 2023, hasn’t opened its location at 1271 First Avenue yet. But as renovations continue, co-owners Curtis Stochl and Thaddeus Walters have started to serve their baked goods two days per week at Fancy’s Pizza shop, which serves pizza on weekends.

The pop-up location at 3531 Mount Vernon Rd. SE. will be serving specialties like croissants, pain au chocolat, baguettes, whole wheat sourdough sandwich bread, focaccia and brioche twice a week:

Each week, the café will email and post to social media its updated hours, menu of the week, and opportunities to preorder. It will be open each day until sold out — which has been happening quickly in its first few days.

“We’re really grateful to Fancy’s for hosting us while we do construction on our building, and to the local community for trying us out. Cedar Rapids has really showed up for us,” Stochl said.

Pop-ups will continue there until Cafe Allez’s 100-year-old building is finished with renovations. The shop initially hoped to open there in 2024, before the building’s need for extensive renovations became apparent.

A timeline for opening the café’s permanent location is not yet available.

The space, across from Coe College, previously served as Tee’s Liberian Dish. Before that, it was Brewed Awakenings, which closed in December 2020.

Stochl and Walters have an extensive background in food and hospitality service. Stochl worked in his father’s restaurant, Pizza Haus in Williamsburg, for nearly 25 years before baking at New Pioneer Food Co-Op. Walters, a founding co-owner of Goldfinch Cyclery, brings experience from Greyhound Deli & Cafe, Cappy’s Pizzeria and Local Crumb.

“It’s great to be back in a kitchen, baking stuff people enjoy,” Walters said.

Stochl and his wife Emily Stochl, also a co-owner, met as Coe College students and spent a lot of time at Brewed Awakenings with friends and professors. Cafe Allez’s theme combining the culture of coffee with high-quality pastries was inspired by travels through Europe.

“This is a location that has had a special place in my heart for 15 years now,” Emily Stochl previously told The Gazette. “We're very excited to bring a coffee shop back to that neighborhood and bring some life back into that space again.”

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.

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