After a March 2025 fire gutted the basement and first floor of their South Grand cafe, Gelateria Coffee Co. owners Andy and Amanda Fair are mapping out a careful comeback that will give the neighborhood favorite more room to work and more ways to feed people. The Fairs have bought the neighboring Orpheum building and plan to use the added square footage for production space, extra indoor seating and an expanded dinner menu. Their goal is to preserve the 1909 building’s old-school charm while finally solving the storage and equipment bottlenecks that limited the original cafe.
Fire, Damage And A Fast Neighborhood Response
The blaze broke out in the basement on March 7, 2025 and forced Gelateria to close while crews assessed heavy damage to the lower levels, according to St. Louis Magazine. Neighbors and nearby businesses did not wait for an official game plan. They threw together fundraisers and donation drives for displaced staff, including benefit shows and restaurant donation weekends, as Mound City Messenger reported. Those events, combined with an online fundraiser, turned into serious money for workers that St. Louis Public Radio later noted had climbed into six figures.
Rebuild Plans: Bigger Kitchen, Same Soul
The rebuild will use the cafe’s original footprint and extend into the Orpheum space next door, bumping indoor seating from 48 to about 70 and giving the team the back-of-house muscle they lacked before. The plans call for a walk-in cooler, a pastry area equipped for lamination, a deck oven and upgraded gelato production, Sauce Magazine reports. Owner Andy Fair told the outlet he wants the place to feel like the same neighborhood hangout, just with a deeper menu. Lattes, gelato and pizza by the slice will return, alongside in-house croissants, whole pizzas, a small program of house-made pasta and draft beer.
How The Neighborhood Kept Staff Paid
In the days right after the fire, local restaurants pledged portions of weekend sales to help cover paychecks, and Off Broadway stepped up to host benefit shows, First Alert 4 reported in March 2025. A later roundup of closures and comebacks found that combined efforts pushed support for staff into the six-figure range and credited the GoFundMe campaign and neighborhood fundraisers with keeping wages flowing, according to St. Louis Public Radio. The owners say that kind of backing bought them time to plan a deliberate rebuild instead of rushing to reopen in a half-finished space.
Timeline And What Comes Next
Fair is eyeing early 2027 for a full reopening, although he is hoping to bring back a smaller operation sooner by rolling out mobile coffee and gelato service while the permanent production setup comes together, per Sauce Magazine. He told the outlet he is working with the SBA through the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership and pulling together a local construction and design team focused on keeping the building’s historic bones intact. For South Grand regulars, the message is simple: the shop will be back, a little bigger and with many of the same people behind the counter.
