The busiest hours in Weston Center now start at 3 p.m. That is when The Chase opens at 190 Weston Road, in the space that used to be the Lunch Box. On a good night the crowd stands three deep at the bar until last call, which comes somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30 a.m., as owner Josh Tolk told 06880 in July. Weston has its evenings back. The mornings are still open, and two very different efforts are now aimed at them.
A Weston chef's café already has an opening window. Separately, the town's oldest commercial building could be taken apart and rebuilt as a coffee shop, but only if voters agree and only once a structural report's warnings are dealt with. That second plan is the one Weston gets to decide.
The Morning Went Quiet Before the Lunch Box Closed
The breakfast gap began before the Lunch Box closed. Josh and Jessica Tolk bought the restaurant in 2014, when it was the only place to eat in town other than Georgetown or Westport. They served breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. Then, according to the 06880 profile, the Lunch Box dropped breakfast about three years ago, and the restaurant closed roughly a year before The Chase opened over Memorial Day weekend 2026.
Tolk's reading of the change was straightforward. "People's eating habits changed," he told 06880. "They're willing to hop in their car, and spend more money in fancier places." The Tolks answered that with a bar built for evenings, with neon, a jukebox, pizza and mostly high-top seating. So Weston Center has a gathering place again, and it opens in the afternoon. Both proposals below are aimed at the hours before it does.
Hemma Café Is the Plan With a Date
The first proposal comes from Chef Molly Healey. Westport knows her from Manna Toast, and she went on to build Hemma Kitchen, a health-focused meal delivery business. Lachat Town Farm's event page describes her as a Weston local and says Hemma Café is coming to Weston Center in summer 2027. Hemma is the Swedish word for "home." The same page describes the café as "a community meeting place where Weston residents can come to socialize, nourish themselves, and simply relax."
No exact storefront has been announced. Healey's café is a private business on its own timetable, so no town vote stands between residents and a cup of coffee there. The first chance to taste the food comes in mid-November.
- What: Fall Harvest Dinner with Chef Molly Healey, billed as a sneak peek of Hemma Café
- When: Saturday, Nov. 14, 7 p.m.
- Where: Lachat Town Farm, 106 Godfrey Road
- Cost: $90 per person, with no refunds, though tickets can be transferred
- Format: long communal tables seating groups of eight, shared platters, a complimentary welcome cocktail, and BYOB for anything beyond it
The menu opens with a spiced cider spritz and moves through a kale and squash salad, fennel orange roasted chicken, miso roasted eggplant and smashed fried potatoes. It closes with buttermilk biscuits with whipped honey butter, an assortment of pastries from Hemma Café, and coffee and tea. Dessert at a November dinner is the earliest preview of what Weston Center mornings could look like in 2027.
The Old Post Office Is the Plan With a Vote
The second proposal is older and much harder to pull off. The old post office and general store, built around 1790, stands near Bisceglie-Scribner Park at 141 Newtown Turnpike. It has been moved before, in the 1980s. It has served as a post office, a general store and later a museum, and an engineer's report now calls it "currently derelict," The Connecticut Mercury reported.
First Selectwoman Samantha Nestor presented the proposal at the Board of Selectmen's Oct. 1 meeting. It comes from the Friends of the Weston Old Post Office Committee and the Weston History & Culture Center. The plan is to rebuild the building on the Center's campus as a coffee shop, local artisan gift shop and gathering place, modeled on Greiser's Coffee & Market in Easton, with an independent operator running it rather than the Center. Rich Rudolph, the developer of 176 Weston Road, supports the plan and is helping with a commercial feasibility analysis. Weston Today's recap of the meeting adds that the committee and the Center had brought in experts to assess whether the building could be saved and restored.
The backers say they will "assume all costs and responsibilities for design, rebuild, and adaptive reuse." Before any espresso machine arrives, several things have to happen:
- The History & Culture Center board finishes the feasibility study it has authorized, then votes on whether to go ahead.
- The town attorney works out the legal form of the handoff, whether a gift, a $1 sale, a loan or a lease.
- The town decides whether to pay to dismantle the building, estimated at about $50,000, and to restore the current site, at a cost not yet known, possibly from existing reserve funds.
- The backers hold informal talks with Planning and Zoning, the Historic District Commission and the Aspetuck Health District.
- Voters approve the transfer at a Special Town Meeting.
Nestor was clear about that last step:
"Whatever we do will require a special town meeting, and the town will have to vote on whether we move this asset to the History and Culture Center."
She also said the town would have "skin in the game," while the project "will be primarily driven from private donations." The board discussed whether any town money would come through the capital budget or a special appropriation but did not decide. No vote was taken on Oct. 1, and as of the Mercury's report no date had been set for a town meeting. "Their process is in the very early stages," Nestor said.
A Coffee Shop Asks More of a 1790 Building Than a Museum Does
The trade-off behind the vote sits in the engineering report. The firm DeStefano & Chamberlain, in an evaluation dated July 31, 2026, found the building "in poor condition." Its timbers "have experienced considerable decay and insect damage," and moving it in one piece "is not a realistic expectation." The firm recommends taking it apart and reassembling it at the new site. It also warns that the full extent of the damage will not be known until then, so the budget should carry a contingency.
The report considers two futures for the building. As part of a commercial use, it would have to meet current building code. As a museum exhibit, more of the original building could be preserved. A working coffee shop therefore keeps the building in daily use at the cost of some of what makes it old, and a museum keeps more of the old fabric with less daily life inside. The current proposal tries to do both at once: a museum campus owns the building, and an independent business serves coffee in it.
Nestor's own comments show where she draws the line. She spoke in favor of the proposal, calling it "something everybody can get behind." She also said there had been talk of moving the building to 176 Weston Road, and added: "But moving this, which is a town asset, to anything that's other than a museum is not really comfortable for me." Placing it on the History & Culture Center campus at 104 Weston Road is how the plan keeps a town-owned building under a museum's care while still putting coffee in it.
There is also a practical reason to act. "Right now, it is a place that is vandalized," Nestor told the board. "We don't know that they're teenagers, but people break into it." Town officials said the site has no security cameras, and the board was told the police chief would be consulted.
Sidewalks Are Being Built Toward the Same Center
All of this is happening while the town center is being rebuilt for people on foot. The Town Center Intersection and Pedestrian Safety Improvements project adds a northbound right-turn lane and signal improvements at Weston Road/Route 57 and School Road. It also adds a sidewalk along Norfield Road from Town Hall to Norfield Church, and a sidewalk and path from Revson Field along Lords Highway toward Old Hyde Road. The town reported in April that construction had begun. The project page still lists the work as under construction, with completion estimated for fall 2026.
If that estimate holds, the sidewalks will be finished well before Hemma's summer 2027 opening. Whether the Old Post Office follows depends on a feasibility study, a museum board vote and a Special Town Meeting, none of which has been scheduled. The one firm date on the calendar is Nov. 14 at Lachat Town Farm, where dinner ends with Hemma Café pastries and coffee.
When a 1790 building is headed for a town vote and a new café is coming to the center, the people who think about Weston Center most are often the ones who own homes near it. If you want to talk through what changes like these mean for your own property, Jillian Klaff is glad to help. Request a personalized market consultation.
