Carma’s Cafe, located on 32nd Street between N. Charles and St. Paul Streets, was established by owners Carma Halterman and Michael Lynch in the winter of 2004 and has since been serving residents of Charles Village and Hopkins students.
“The story about why we opened the café is kind of funny. There was this place that had been in this spot for a little bit, and the woman who owned it — her acting career took off. She got a regular spot on The Wire,” Halterman said. “And I said to Michael one day, ‘Charles Village is like a small college town. I don’t understand why Charles Village can’t support a little coffee shop.’ And he said we should do it.”
Halterman was a graphic designer and Lynch was a castle caretaker prior to opening up the café as roommates-turned-small business owners. Halterman spoke of how Carma’s Café would have remained just a what-if dream until friends and other people in their lives began to invest in their idea of opening up a coffee shop in the neighborhood.
“Over the course of about six months, the strangest people — the cleaning lady at the office where I worked, a labor union organizer — said, ‘Well I’ll put in $5,000, I’ll put in $3,000.’ We did not ask a single person to invest,” Halterman said. “We just kept talking about what we wanted to do, and that initial chunk got us started.”
Carma’s Café was entirely refurbished and redone by Halterman and Lynch over the course of several months before it finally opened up to the public.
“We built the place, literally — the walls, the cabinets, the tables, pastry case, everything. Michael and I did it pretty much alone, nights and weekends,” Halterman said. “And it took us about six months. I even made our first set of coffee cups, so it was really, completely all made by hand. And for the first two years, Michael and I were half the staff all the time.”
Halterman remarked that the café’s popularity among Hopkins students and Charles Village residents was unexpected for them both. Though Carma’s Café started out as a coffee shop, it has expanded its menu options over the years as demand has risen.
“I thought I was opening a coffee shop! I thought I was opening a place where people would stop to get coffee and tea on their way to class. I really had no intention of opening a restaurant. We wanted to have some food because people wanted food and then it really just took on a life of its own,” Halterman said. “We make everything from scratch, and we do all our cooking on portable electric burners that are mostly used for catering.”
Currently, Halterman and Lynch are looking toward the future of Carma’s Café. Because the café can be extremely busy and crowded in-house, Halterman wants to expand Carma’s to-go offerings.
“Because we’re so small, if people started thinking of us as a take-out place, we would have no line to speak of,” Halterman said. “We have regular gigs at Hopkins — like the chemistry department, we do a tea for them for all of their seminars in the spring and in the fall. For the Graduate [Representative] Organization, we do a big coffee hour for them every Monday afternoon. I’d like to develop more of that.”
For Halterman, the main reason why she loves Carma’s Café is for the meaningful personal connections she has made with members of the Hopkins student body.
“I love the kind of ebb and flow of being a real integral part of the community. May is always so difficult because there are kids that have been like extended family for years. When people graduate, we lose them,” Halterman said. “But on the other hand, every fall somebody says, ‘Have you heard about Carma’s?’ And we get a whole rush of people who have never been here before and are really excited.
“I’ve had mothers call and say, ‘My son’s got the flu and all he really wants is a grilled cheese and tomato soup, and I know you don’t deliver, but he lives right up at the Commons. Would you take some to him?’ I like that. I like that I get those phone calls from mom and dad. It’s like we’re part of each others’ lives.”
