Down on Main Street: The Hall

The Hall Coffee and Social Club is a cozy, laid-back spot amid the hus­tle and bus­tle of down­town. Located on the high side of South Main in the build­ing for­mer­ly occu­pied by The Cairn, the busi­ness opened in 2022 by Jason Hall, just as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was eas­ing up and peo­ple began going out to pub­lic places again.

As the High Side con­struc­tion con­tin­ues, it can be con­fus­ing for those look­ing to access shops on the east side of Main Street between Lexington Avenue and Broadway. Recently, the tem­po­rary ramp from the Broadway side to the remain­ing side­walk at store­front lev­el has been replaced, and access to most store­fronts is available.

In addi­tion, many shops have rear entrances acces­si­ble from Church Alley, and some even have a few park­ing spaces in the rear. The Hall is one of those. So we have no excuse not to patron­ize them dur­ing this time when some peo­ple are avoid­ing the area.

I sat down with Jason Hall last Thursday to chat about The Hall and down­town in gen­er­al. The first thing I noticed about Jason is that he is a seri­ous and forth­right man. He does not hold back in describ­ing his suc­cess­es and strug­gles in run­ning the Winchester shop.

Jason is from California, so the first thing I want­ed to know was what enticed him to move to Winchester, of all places, and start a new business.

He told me they were “look­ing to start a cof­fee shop and we were in California. Prices are high there, and it seemed that we would be stuck in California if we stayed there. So the idea was, if we’re going to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty, let’s try some­thing new.

“Our friends end­ed up mov­ing to Mount Sterling, and so we came and vis­it­ed and found this build­ing. [We] talked with a bunch of oth­er busi­ness own­ers in town and had a good feel­ing about it.”

Jason told me they got off to a great start, attribut­ing most of that to the new­ness of the busi­ness and the fact that every­one was itch­ing to get out after the pan­dem­ic. But lat­er, the strug­gles started.

“This last win­ter was pret­ty hard. I think there was about a month-long peri­od when there was snow. Then the con­struc­tion hurt the busi­ness, but hon­est­ly, it’s pick­ing up because win­ter was dif­fi­cult. People veered away from down­town for a peri­od of time, think­ing that it’s kind of run down and stuff, but once they get down here and see that peo­ple have done a lot of work and built a lot of new busi­ness­es [with] unique offer­ings... I think it’s real­ly help­ing peo­ple to get back into the mind­set of, ‘yeah, let’s come down­town — it’s a good place to be’.”

The Hall is a good place to be. Jason described the vibe as a “mid­dle ground” between noisy bars and restau­rants where just hang­ing out isn’t always encour­aged. The Hall wel­comes peo­ple who just want to enjoy a good bev­er­age and maybe a snack with friends, and they can linger as long as they wish.

The lay­out is con­ducive to such inter­ac­tions. Various sec­tions are spaced to allow con­ver­sa­tions among patrons in dif­fer­ent set­tings, from the win­dow seat­ing areas to the cozy fire­place sec­tion. Books are avail­able for browsing. 

What does the future hold for The Hall? One obsta­cle in Jason’s mind has been food availability.

“We don’t have a full kitchen, so we’re work­ing on lim­it­ed capac­i­ty. I can’t fry and all that stuff, so I can’t ever have a real­ly full food menu.

“But I’m work­ing on [a sand­wich]; I’m label­ing it the Padilla. It’s a pita bread that I fold over and do with the sauce and cheese, almost like a que­sadil­la. I’m work­ing on some dif­fer­ent options for that. Right now we’re doing one with sausage, cheese, and a spicy gar­lic aioli. I’m also doing it with oven-roast­ed turkey.

“I’m look­ing at pos­si­bly doing a piz­za pock­et with piz­za sauce, pep­per­oni, and moz­zarel­la cheese. I’ve got oth­er ideas on the back burner.”

In addi­tion to the usu­al cof­fee shop line­up of lattes, cof­fees, teas, and the like, The Hall also serves adult bev­er­ages, but not many peo­ple seem to be aware of this.

“The beer and cock­tails nev­er real­ly took off for us. When we start­ed out, we were open in the evenings through­out the week. It start­ed off okay, and then it just kind of fad­ed out. We had to pull that back.”

Evenings are return­ing, albeit in a more lim­it­ed capac­i­ty, with spe­cial events, includ­ing month­ly open mic nights, the Heartstrings Songwriters’ Circle, and one-off events like the recent “Big Hair Bingo” fundrais­er for a local char­i­ty. They also host pri­vate events such as wed­dings, bach­e­lor par­ties, and anniver­saries. And start­ing this month, they will host a month­ly “Jazz Jam” on third Saturdays.

WinCity Voices is also doing some pre­lim­i­nary plan­ning to host one or more sto­ry­telling events at The Hall this sum­mer and fall. So things are look­ing up.

Jason real­ly want­ed to empha­size host­ing events.

“Community is our top pri­or­i­ty. We’re a safe place for peo­ple to gath­er and bring a friend. The social aspect of the club is some­thing I’m hop­ing to pro­mote a lit­tle bit more. If you want to host an event and you’re look­ing for a great spot, we can help.

“We’ve done proud town, the Humanist group, book clubs, and knit­ting clubs. So we’re open­ing that up for reser­va­tions dur­ing reg­u­lar busi­ness hours. Our slo­gan is ‘you put the social in social club.’ We have the space, we have the atmos­phere, and we’re open for busi­ness, so bring your social gath­er­ing in here.”

It’s also a great spot for pop-up events for busi­ness­es and char­i­ties, such as the recent All Voices Reading Room events. Last Thursday, for exam­ple, my wife and I attend­ed “Big Hair Bingo Night,” a fundrais­er for All Voices. The event was a fun and enter­tain­ing show­case of The Hall’s abil­i­ty to host small to medi­um-sized events.

Jason is bull­ish on the future of his adopt­ed home­town. He sees great things ahead, but notes that “retrain­ing peo­ple to know that down­town is a good place to be” is an issue.

“I’m hear­ing about new busi­ness­es, and sev­er­al of the build­ings that have been vacant for a while have been pur­chased. So there’s a lot of new busi­ness­es, a lot of unique busi­ness­es com­ing to town—a vari­ety of com­ple­men­tary busi­ness­es, which is some­thing we need to see.

“We have the [high side project] and we have the enter­tain­ment des­ti­na­tion cen­ter in place. It would be good to see more busi­ness­es thriv­ing, so we can have lat­er hours, and peo­ple can take advan­tage of our downtown.”

I’ll be spend­ing more time down­town start­ing in June, and you’ll often see me hang­ing out at The Hall. The cof­fee is excel­lent, the atmos­phere is cozy and invit­ing, and the own­ers are com­mit­ted to the future suc­cess of Winchester’s emerg­ing down­town scene. Hope to see you there.