Clinton Edminister can best be described as a fixture on Savannah’s civic scene. For years he’s been a business owner in the Starland District. Ever an advocate for development growth outside of Savannah’s historic district, he’s decided to put his money where his mouth is once again.

Clinton is about to open a tiny coffee shop on Waters Avenue in Savannah. A corridor that hasn’t seen much development in quite some time but is beginning to have a moment. I spoke to Clinton last week about his vision for the neighborhood and the plan for his cafe. The key for him? Make it affordable for everyone.

JB: You’ve been at this for more than a year, haven’t you?

Clinton: Yes, I have. I wouldn’t say I’ve been having a blast this entire year, but now, this is when the fun stuff happens. There’s equipment arriving every day. We are painting walls. We are getting dirty. It’s just an absolute chaotic adventure.

JB: The name of this soon-to-be café is called Waters Café. Where are you exactly?

Clinton: We are on Waters and 40^th. Right on the intersection. About 3 blocks from the corner of Daffin Park.

JB: You and I have been in this town long enough to know that Waters corridor has been largely ignored for as long as I can remember. But if you drive it now, you can see development. What led you to decide, ‘you know what? I’m going in there too.‘

Clinton: In January of 2021 I bought a house over on the other end of Daffin Park, near Bee Road. I was walking from my house to Starlandia (on Bull Street) and I saw this building. I thought to myself it was in a unique location among all of these abandoned buildings in this area.

Then I thought, there’s really no café or restaurant except for the Chinese take out next to us for quite a while. I did some math and determined that this location would be the closest coffee/café spot for about 15,000 people. The numbers were there. The direction of where some people are trying to get Waters Avenue to go was there. And also that I’m kinda maybe crazy.

JB: How much convincing did it take for you? It is still a leap of faith to go into an under developed neighborhood.

Clinton: I don’t think that part had much of an impact on deciding to do it or not. Especially with what we are going to be doing here. That is, all people of the economic ladder are hungry and need coffee. You don’t need to be super wealthy to wake up hungry and need a cup of coffee and a muffin.

What I realized early on was that we would be focusing on affordability and pricing mainly because of where we are.  This being an under developed neighborhood. People in this area need affordable options. I feel like we’ve been able to do that at our other store, Starlandia. We focus on low prices, low prices, low prices and focus on volume.  So I’m trying to take what I’ve done there and do it here with those same price points.

Mainly it was, was I ready personally to start something else. I’ve been kind of waiting to start some new venture. I hadn’t been planning on opening a café for years.  It was the location, the neighborhood and the timing.

JB: How big is it? What can we expect?

Clinton: We are looking at about 800 square feet. We put a lot of thought into the layout in order to maximize efficiency.  It’s a lot cheaper to make mistakes on paper than in real life.  We built a 3D model to look at how we would use the space.

JB: Breakfast/Lunch? Are you going to be open later?

Clinton: The best thing anyone can do is to start simple.  Go from there and make mistakes. We’ll be open 7-3pm, seven days a week as soon as we can. We’ll be focusing on grilled cheese, egg sandwiches, bagels and other sandwiches and go from there. We are going to do it well and fresh and affordably. Once we get a flow down, we expand on other menu items.

JB: Sounds great. When?

Clinton: Good question. I would say around Valentines Day, I would like to be taking money in exchange for some sort of food item. We may not have a full menu out, but we will have some coffee. The health department was here, they are very excited about what we are doing. We’ve had inspections, we are really on a roll.

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