There’s a certain kind of gravity to Mary Low Coffeehouse — the stream of balmy light pouring through the wide windows on a frigid Maine morning, the scent of freshly ground beans trailing students down the hallway, or the barista-curated playlist threading through the room. But the real draw is never just the coffee. It’s the people.
The Coffeehouse is one of the few spaces on the College’s campus that feels entirely student-made. Everything from the specialty drinks to the latte art to the culture that surrounds it originates with students themselves. It isn’t just a coffeehouse; it’s an animated reflection of what belonging looks like when the institution steps back and lets students take over.
Though Mary Low dormitory was constructed in 1942, named in honor of the first woman to attend the College, the Coffeehouse itself only opened in 2016. It began not as an administrative initiative but as a student passion project. “The coffee shop originally began as a club of students that had a passion to make coffee for themselves and friends,” manager Taylor Bailey `26 said. “Eventually, someone had the idea to make it into a real business that all of campus has access to.” From those modest origins, something quietly remarkable took root.
That growth has not been without its challenges. Because the College does not subsidize the Coffeehouse’s budget, the operation runs entirely on its own payroll and financial support, a precarious arrangement that requires careful stewardship. This past fall marked a significant milestone: the first year Mary Low turned a profit.
“It was a lot of deliberation and discussion about where we could cut costs,” said manager Aidan Kwong `26. “We had to switch vendors and start sourcing at cheaper prices in order to keep prices low for students and make our drinks accessible for the greater Colby community.” Prices were raised slightly to keep pace with rising supply costs, but the achievement was hard-won. For a student-run business operating without institutional subsidy, breaking even isn’t just a milestone, it’s a necessity.
Mary Low also creates space for other communities to coalesce. Charlotte Rotenberg `28, the Coffeehouse’s events manager, oversees a calendar more expansive than most students might expect. “Weekly gatherings like IVCF and Autism Circle have found a reliable home there, alongside events for the Asian Students Association, the Russian Club, the Spanish Club, and the Colby Korean Club.”
One recurring highlight is Saturday Night Live, hosted in collaboration with CMI — an evening of live music and good coffee at the coffeehouse’s most social and unhurried. “For baristas, they can be some of the most fun hours to work,” Rotenberg said.
The space resists rigid programming by design. “At the end of the day it is also just a space,” she noted, “so it leaves a lot of freedom for clubs that might want to do something specific. I think students appreciate Mary Low as opposed to other event spaces on campus mostly because it is student run.” That sense of student ownership runs deeper than event logistics — it shapes the way people relate to the place altogether.
Bailey, who has worked at the coffeehouse for all four years of their time at Colby, speaks about what drew them there in the first place. “The thing I like most about Mary Low is it reminds me of home,” they said. Back in Nebraska, Bailey spent six years working in their parents’ coffee shop, learning the rhythms of a small business that knew its regulars by name. “That same feeling of community has followed me to Colby within the Mary Low Coffeehouse.”
Other baristas echo that sentiment, though with their own particular emphasis. Doris Simpkins `26 described the coffeehouse less as employment and more as inheritance: “Mary Low doesn’t feel like a job. It feels like a second home. Students don’t just come for coffee. A lot of the time they just come to interact with their friends on shift.”
That distinction matters. “Working here gave me a community I didn’t even have to go searching for,” Simpkins said. Where college culture often frames belonging as something to be actively pursued, the coffeehouse offers something rarer: an immediate, built-in network, formed through shared labor and daily ritual.
That labor, however, is unusually social in nature. “It’s a job that requires a lot more socialization than almost every other job on campus,” Sofia Escobar `26 said. The cafe runs on collective rhythm rather than hierarchy; shifts depend on intuitive coordination and an almost choreographic trust between baristas. Escobar described a moment that is hard to imagine anywhere else on campus:
“Once a fellow barista wanted her hair braided when she was taking orders, but obviously she had to be standing by the counter and I wasn’t tall enough. So I stood on a tall chair and was giving her Dutch braids hovering over everybody during a rush.” The image is both whimsical and oddly apt — efficiency coexisting with intimacy, neither one compromising the other.
What these moments reveal is something that transcends the average campus coffeehouse. The existence of Mary Low seems to be aimed toward fostering a community, whether behind the bar, settled into a corner table, pulling a shot, or having your hair braided mid-rush.
Reflecting on what he hopes Mary Low continues to represent, Kwong put it simply: “I think since day one, Mary Low has been a welcoming and inviting place for anyone to come and grab a coffee or do some work. I’m really happy I’m able to contribute to that culture now as a manager.” It is, at its core, a modest aspiration, and perhaps that is exactly why it endures. In a place as transient as a college campus, where each class arrives and departs on a fixed schedule, the Coffeehouse persists as something genuinely continuous. Students graduate, but the warmth remains.
~ Josefina Moehn-Aguayo `26
Yay Josie!