Wellfleet's Winter Coffee Moved to Main Street This Year

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings this winter, the Wicked Oyster at 50 Main St. opens hours before dinner. From 8 to 11:30 a.m., the dining room serves coffee from Six Depot Roastery in the Berkshires and pastries from Pain d'Avignon in Hyannis, which arrive hot. Sébastien Taffara and his wife, Rosa Simpson, run it as the Wicked Café, and it opened the weekend of Oct. 23.

In a summer town, a new coffee counter would barely be news. In Wellfleet in November it is, because last winter the town had almost nowhere to sit down for coffee besides Dunkin', as the Provincetown Independent reported when the café opened. The way the café works shows why the town's previous morning anchor stopped baking. The new one does not bake at all.

Sixteen years of croissants at Lecount Hollow Road

PB Boulangerie Bistro opened in 2010. Chef Philippe Rispoli started it with Boris Villatte, who was the original baker and left in 2013 to open Maison Villatte in Falmouth. At its peak it was a big operation. On a typical summer day the staff turned out more than 500 loaves and 1,000 pastries, and leftovers often went to the Wellfleet Food Pantry.

On April 15, 2026, PB announced that it would close the bakery permanently and keep the bistro, renamed Chez Chloe Bistro. The Cape Cod Times reported that Chez Chloe would stay at 15 Lecount Hollow Road and serve dinner Thursday through Sunday. In June, the paper's restaurant roundup reported that the bistro had opened. The business is still at that address. Its mornings ended.

Staffing was the main reason. For two years, despite a search that reached beyond the country, PB could not hire a head baker, so Rispoli did the baking himself. Eliza Cox, who helps manage the business, explained the problem to the Independent in a way that applies to any Outer Cape bakery:

"Staffing for a bakery is highly specialized. You need professional pastry chefs and professional bread bakers. If you employ those people only for the summer, they are not going to come to the Cape. If you stay open in the winter because you want to keep them employed, you end up losing money in the colder months."

Cox also told the paper that the business spent $120,000 on electricity in the past year and that the price of flour, eggs and butter had spiked. Rispoli estimated that closing the bakery ended about 45 to 50 seasonal jobs. A bakery needs ovens running overnight and skilled bakers on the payroll every month, while the summer crowds that pay for them show up for only about three months.

A café built so the winter math works

The Wicked Café works because it avoids nearly every cost Cox described.

• It borrows a room. Taffara co-owns the Wicked Oyster with Alex Hay and Garrett Smythe, and the café runs inside the restaurant instead of in a storefront of its own. The restaurant's website lists dinner daily from 4 p.m. and the café on Thursday through Saturday mornings.
• It doesn't bake. The pastries come from Pain d'Avignon in Hyannis. Taffara told the Independent the order runs to croissants more than scones: "That's the French in me."
• It opens three mornings, for three and a half hours each. That is 8 to 11:30 a.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, not a seven-day schedule like a summer bakery's.

The Hyannis delivery covers the job PB could not fill. The café gets professional pastry without keeping a pastry chef on the Outer Cape through February. Taffara told the Independent that he and Simpson want a modest, cheerful place where people in town can gather in the mornings. In the first few days, he said, "we had 60 people show up for a few hours. It was a lot of energy. We want them to keep coming."

At PB, the August line for the 7 a.m. opening could reach 30 people. Sixty people in a few hours during the café's first days is a smaller crowd, but it is enough to support a café designed to need fewer customers.

The shorter list of places open until spring

The café matters this much because so much of Wellfleet's daytime food has closed for the season. These are the businesses' own posted notices:

Flying Fish lists breakfast from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in season, and that will not return until 2027. Until then, Main Street has the only sit-down morning table in town, three days a week.

Planning winter around Thursday to Saturday

Because the café is open only on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, much of the town's late-fall calendar falls on its days. Wellfleet Public Library's winter hours start at 10 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, so a café stop at 8 and a library visit at 10 fit into one morning. On Monday through Wednesday the library opens at noon and stays open until 8 p.m.; on Sunday it is open from 2 to 5.

Here is what's ahead from publish day through December, from the library, Preservation Hall and the Wellfleet Chamber:

The first weekend of December is the busiest of the season. The Wellfleet Chamber's tree lighting on Friday, Dec. 4, features local artist Jordan Renzi and WES students, with treats, cocoa and goody bags for children. That same evening, Preservation Hall opens its annual Holiday Bazaar, with more than 20 vendors on all three floors, and the bazaar continues Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, Dec. 5, the café closes at 11:30 a.m., half an hour after the bazaar opens, so coffee and the bazaar fit into the same morning.

How the café's model fits a winter town

PB's croissants needed a full professional bakery in Wellfleet, and the cost of staffing it beyond summer ended it after 16 seasons. The Wicked Café runs inside an existing restaurant, with a roaster in the Berkshires and a bakery in Hyannis. It makes no promise of a seven-day schedule. That design gives it a chance to last in a town where a winter morning brings dozens of customers, not the hundreds a summer morning did.

The café is open Thursday through Saturday, 8 to 11:30 a.m., at 50 Main St.

At The Loveland Group, we pay close attention to what stays open in Wellfleet after Columbus Day, because winter mornings shape a year-round life on the Outer Cape. If you're wondering how a Wellfleet home would work for you between November and May, start a conversation with us for a personalized neighborhood consultation.