If autumn had its own personal cheering squad, its leaders would be Michelle Gonzalez and Audrey Borden.
The two met in October 2019 while in college and got married in October 2023, just a couple of months after opening October Café in Norwood Park on Chicago’s far Northwest Side.
“It’s such a cozy season,” Gonzalez said. “The colors, the smells. Pumpkin spice, caramel, apples. Oh, my god. We just love it. It’s the best season. You get to wear your biggest sweater and just feel so cozy. It’s delicious. I love it.”
About a week before Starbucks rolls out its Pumpkin Spice Latte for the 2025 season, October Café will be celebrating its second anniversary with face painting and giveaways. As always, the October Café PSLs will be flowing, as will signature drinks like the Cozy Up Chai Tea Latte and Cuddle Weather (hot chocolate with hazelnut and caramel).
And every customer who walks in the door will be greeted with a cheery, “Hello, pumpkin!”
Every month, the all-day café with a full menu of vegan fare offers up a different Fall Flight, with four cortado-sized specialty drinks. This month, it’s the Addams Family Flight with Morticia (strawberry, vanilla, raspberry latte), Pugsley (blue-raspberry lemonade), Gomez (coconut, caramel, Sunbutter latte) and Wednesday (ube mocha).
“I’m gonna be honest,” Gonzales said. “I don’t like pumpkin spice from other places … Our pumpkin is more of like a pumpkin from the garden type of pumpkin, not like a sweet candy pumpkin because ours actually has pumpkin in it, a pumpkin puree with spices and stuff.”
Fall-themed art lines October Cafe's walls. | All inset photos: Heather Lalley
A love story, in coffee shop form
Gonzales, 26, comes from a family of entrepreneurs. And Borden, 24, has always loved coffee.
They drove by the vacant, 1870s-era storefront just up the hill from the Norwood Park commuter train station one day and thought, What if?
“Let’s make a coffee shop based off our love story,” Gonzalez said. “It’s October Café. That’s our month, our season. We love it all.”
Just a few years out of college, the two had some reservations about becoming business owners.
But Gonzales’ parents encouraged them: “They were like, Audrey, Michelle, if you want a dream, you can’t just wait for it to come,” she said. “Go get it. If it fails, it fails. Keep trying.”
Thirty days after signing the lease, after scrubbing the space and knocking out some walls and decorating it in perma-fall vibes, October Café opened its doors.
“We were both working our other jobs the one day, and then the next day, the café was open,” Borden said.
Working together as a married couple presents some challenges, the two said. There is some butting of heads. But there is also mutual respect and a shared vision for the cozy café.
An Instagram friendly mural, ready for social media posts.
Doing business as their authentic selves
Social media is central to October Café’s strategy.
The two post a fresh video to Instagram, Facebook and TikTok every day, sometimes highlighting food and beverage offerings and sometimes having fun with a trending sound or cozy fall theme. The café has 12,000 followers on Instagram, 2,300 on Facebook and 1,500 on TikTok, and the pair said they devote more than two hours each day to posting to social media and engaging with followers.
But not all of that engagement is as cozy as a brisk autumn day.
In the 2024 presidential election, only about 22% of Chicago residents voted for Donald Trump. October Café sits in the city’s deepest red pocket.
“That was a decision,” Gonzalez said. “We were at the beginning like, Do we say that we are gay? But what are you gonna say? ‘We’re friends and October is for no reason?’”
Authenticity was the only choice, they said.
“If they don’t like it, well, we don’t want business of that kind,” she said.
But it hasn’t been easy.
People frequently make baseless complaints about the café to city inspectors, they said. Their social media posts are often besieged by anti-gay trolls, which they stay on top of deleting. And they’ll sometimes get flooded with one-star reviews.
Online response to a recent drag queen storytime was so vitriolic, they said they feared for their safety.
“It’s cowardice,” Gonzalez said.
All customers entering the cafe are greeted with a friendly, "Hello, pumpkin!"
Preparing to grow
Mostly though, Gonzalez and Borden said they focus on making the café a welcoming spot for all.
The food menu is packed with vegan and gluten-free dishes like the best-selling Pesto Panini, Breakfast Sandwich and Pumpkin Toast. (“The food, basically, is stuff we would eat,” Gonzalez said. “We brought it to people because this is a desert of different foods, especially vegan food.”)
The use Chicago-based roaster Dark Matter for their coffee and buy purees and other ingredients from small, local producers.
Every weekend, artists, craftspeople and other small businesses can sell their wares in the shop for free. The coffee shop regularly hosts fundraisers, sip & paint events, movie nights, live music and more.
Just a few months after opening, the two expanded the cafe into the space next door. And, eventually, they hope to be able to do the same on the other side of the building.
After two years, the pair said the shop is breaking even. They haven’t raised prices and run a regular $5 value meal for students—there are several schools in the area—with a grilled cheese, tater tots and a lemonade.
Everything at the cafe is made to order.
Keeping the prices affordable for the neighborhood while also managing costs is a perpetual balancing act.
Since everything in the café is made to order, wait times can be higher than customers might expect, especially compared to a chain coffee shop. Changing that process would sacrifice quality, they said, which is something they don’t intend to do.
If someone is racing to catch a train, they’ll bump the order to the front of the line, the pair said.
“One time, this family came in and they ordered drinks, but the train was coming and they were like, ‘We’re gonna have to leave,’” Gonzalez recalled. “We had the family go, and then one of our employees made the drinks and ran over to the Metra and made it on time, and they got their drinks.”
They have good reason for wanting to expand the coffee shop even further: With so many families coming in, they’d like to add a playroom for kids.
It would be useful for their growing family, too. As the two announced on social media in June, they’re about to be adding “a new Pumpkin to the Patch.” Borden is pregnant with the couple’s first child, due in January.
Gonzalez’ cousin works in the back of house and her mom, the store’s manager, often works the cash register. So, they said, it would be nice to include their child in the day-to-day operations as much as possible.
“It’s very family-owned,” she said. “That’s my cousin closing in the back. When I say small business, I mean small business.”
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