These 4 shape-shifting establishments in SLC blur the lines between restaurant, bar, coffee shop and new age mall
Some of Salt Lake City’s new food-and-drink businesses are defying description.
Is it a coffeehouse, or a bar? Is it a bagel shop, or a pizzeria? It doesn’t seem to matter, because people are lining up to grab a seat — or a few square feet of dancing space — at these cool spots that shape-shift depending on the time of day.
The website Eater, which covers food and dining culture nationwide, wrote last year that “not-quite-restaurants are everywhere,” and documented the early days of the trend in 2016.
That trend appears to have come to downtown Salt Lake City, at places like Mother Cafe & Bar, Baby’s Bagels/Pie Boy Pizza and Mono Tape Club. Then there’s Church & State, which wears so many hats it would probably be easier to list what it isn’t.
As many restaurants are struggling to get by, and people are drinking less alcohol when they go out, some establishments seem to be experimenting with ways to maximize the earning potential of their lease.
Camille Fiducia, co-owner of Mother Cafe & Bar, said, “You’re paying rent for 24 hours a day. ... Why not use it all day and all night?”
When asked why Mono Tape Club isn’t just a listening room, a bar or a coffee shop, and is instead all three, co-founder Joel Davis half-jokingly said, “Trying to survive in late-stage capitalism.”
Whatever their motivation, these individuals are creating some of the most interesting nooks in the city.
Mother Café & Bar
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) General manager Josh Edgar fills an espresso glass in Mother Cafe & Bar in Salt Lake City on Friday, March 20, 2026.
When Fiducia and her fiance, Sawyer Carpenter, were getting ready to open Mother Cafe & Bar in the former Alibi space at 369 S. Main St. in Salt Lake City, she said people doubted their vision of a spot that was a coffee shop by day and a bar and club by night.
“All of us have both sides,” she said. “... We all go get coffee in the morning and go get a drink at night. ... These two pieces of our day exist within all of us.”
“Why couldn’t they exist within a space and have people understand that both can be attained and it works?” she continued.
At first, they didn’t know which concept was going to “hit,” Fiducia said. But they advertised their dual concepts with signage on the door that says “coffee by day, rhythm by night,” and “people got it right away,” she said.
Now, Mother starts the day with flavorful coffee drinks with provocative names like Handshake Drugs. Then the business takes a break for a changing of the guard in the afternoon, then reopens in the evening as a fully realized nightclub with craft cocktails.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Danté Marsh DJing at Mother Cafe & Bar in Salt Lake City on Friday, March 20, 2026.
Fiducia said people seem to “subscribe” to one side of Mother or the other. During the day, “it’s just people who want to get work done and have a good coffee,” she said.
At night, Mother draws in customers who want “a safe space for dancing, great music and good security,” she said.
There are challenges to transitioning from a mellow coffee shop to a club full of people. It’s a constant battle, she said, between wanting to provide cozy pockets for conversation, and having to clear out tables so drinks don’t get knocked over by people dancing.
“It’s just that cycle of keeping up with that,” Fiducia said.
They’ve also had to remind people that they have a bar license, which means having to show ID — even when they’re just buying coffee.
Overall, she said there doesn’t seem to be a problem with both concepts “coexisting” within Mother and “within people’s psyche.”
Mother Bar & Cafe is open Monday-Wednesday, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.-1 a.m.; Saturday, 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.-1 a.m.; Sunday, 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Follow Mother on Instagram at @houseof.mother.
Baby’s Bagels/Pie Boy Pizza
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Baby's Bagels in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, March 31, 2026. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 5 to 8:30 p.m., it turns into a pizzeria called Pie Boy Pizza.
It might be surprising that a bagel shop would start selling pizza, but for Baby’s Bagels/Pie Boy Pizza co-owners Eric Valchuis, Cyrus Elias and Koby Elias, pizza has “always been on the roadmap” as something they wanted to do, Valchuis said.
Almost a year ago, the Baby’s Bagels staff began baking and selling pizza on Wednesday and Friday nights as Pie Boy Pizza, after slinging their kettle-boiled and freshly baked bagels during the day out of their shop at 204 E. 500 South in Salt Lake City.
They learned to make pizza at home, and “we knew that from just home cooking that we could make good pizzas,” Valchuis said.
However, he said it’s “totally different” making pizza at a restaurant, using professional equipment and keeping up with orders, and they had never worked in a pizzeria before. So the three of them started making pizza in their Baby’s Bagels kitchen as a “pretty low-risk and easy” way of easing into it, Valchuis said.
Using a lot of the same equipment that they had use to make bagels — a mixer, an oven and a newly expanded walk-in cooler — they made pizza that they tested out with their friends. And once they were ready to start making pizza for the public, they did so quietly at first, without advertising it.
The only logistical change they made was applying for a liquor license, so they could serve wine, beer and cocktails to go with their pizza.
Valchuis said making pizza in the same kitchen they use to make bagels “feels like a good use of the space without having to build out a new one to serve a new product.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Pizza at Baby's Bagels in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025.
It’s not a perfect setup, though. Cyrus Elias said they would like to continue making pizza, and that doing so may eventually require moving the concept out of Baby’s Bagels.
“It does feel like there are constraints that make it hard to grow both concepts to what we think they can and should be,” Elias said.
But having that familiar kitchen to start with “has given us the ability to test something new, [and] try a new product that our customers are excited about,” he continued. “And that gives us the courage to go and sign a new lease and do a new thing.”
Baby’s Bagels is open 7:30 a.m.-2 p.m. seven days a week. Pie Boy Pizza is open 5-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Follow both businesses on Instagram at @babys.bagels and @pieboypizza.
Church & State
Church & State opened in 2014 as a “business incubator” and event venue inside a century-old church, but it’s feeling refreshed and shiny these days thanks to its new operations manager, Sam Epperson, who took over running the space with her fiance, Dreu Hudson, in 2024.
The unique downtown building at 370 S. 300 East in Salt Lake City is still full of small businesses that the public can patronize, but under Epperson’s vision, Church & State is now more community-oriented, and “a place to build a village,” she said.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Groanies play their their "Burn It All" EP release show at Church & State on Friday, April 10, 2026.
“We’re basically trying to revive the third space, because there’s so many people that need somewhere to be, but the mall is dead,” Epperson said. Instead, Church & State is what she calls a “new age mall,” spread out over three floors.
There are services like massage, tattoos, haircuts, lashes and nails. There’s a high-end plant shop, an ice cream shop and a celiac-safe coffee shop, called Hallowed Grounds, which Epperson and Hudson own.
And there’s also space for a variety of events, some public and some private, including board game nights, tai chi classes, chess club meetups, jiu jitsu classes, mini tattoo conventions, punk shows, weddings, fashion shows, political debates, markets, spoken word performances, open mic nights, yoga classes, celebrations of life, ice cream-making classes and much more.
Church & State doesn’t have one concept during the day and one at night. Instead it’s “ever-changing because of the variety of events that we host, the variety of businesses that we have inside,” Epperson said.
“I want to give everyone cool a reason to be here,” Hudson said.
Church & State is open Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m.; Friday-Sunday, 8 a.m.-11 p.m. Hours can change on event days.
Keep up on the businesses at Church & State by following @churchandstate1893 on Instagram. Find out what’s happening by following @churchandstateevents on Instagram, or take a look at the bulletin board near the east entrance called “What’s Going on at Church & State”?
Mono Tape Club
Out of the others on this list, Mono Tape Club is the newest, having opened on April 1 in Salt Lake City’s Guadalupe neighborhood.
Owned by Joel Davis, Asher Seevinck, Kelley Howell and Jonathon Armstrong, Mono Tape Club was inspired by Seevinck’s many travels to Japan, where listening rooms — or “jazz kissas” in Japanese — are a popular music-centric experience.
Mono Tape Club, at 521 W. 500 North, is three things in one: a listening room, a bar and a cafe (21+), and it’s all of these things starting at 10 a.m., up until it becomes too busy in the evening to do full coffee service.
The concept got its start in the basement of Yoko Ramen in 2022, Davis said. But due to factors outside the owners’ control, the early Mono Tape Club could be open for only two days.
Davis said they tried to take the loss in stride. After all, the name Mono Tape Club comes from the Japanese idiom “mono no aware,” which is “the celebration of impermanence,” he said.
But they had always hoped they could bring Mono Tape Club back, Davis said, and they decided to try again in the building that Seevinck owned on 500 North.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Joel Davis Plays a record, at the Mono Tape Club on Friday April 17, 2026.
They built about 90% of everything in the place by hand, Davis said: the long bench along the wall, the bar, the tables and the shelves for tapes, vinyl and liquor. And they insulated the walls and ceiling to keep sound from bouncing around the room and sounding dissonant to the ear, he said.
And they picked a sound system “that would sound great with a wide variety of genres of music,” Davis said — a system that “would fit the room, would be warm, would be bright, would be crisp, would be easy on the ears.”
Their vision was a warm, inviting space that “you felt excited to walk into,” Davis said, “and maybe not even expecting in Salt Lake City.”
There’s no sign that says Mono Tape Club, just an image of a white cassette tape above the door — that’s how you’ll know you’re in the right place.
Inside, light filters in through textured plastic over the windows, and knots of people hold hushed conversations over cups of single-origin coffee and highballs — a classic tall whiskey-and-soda cocktail that has become popular in Japan.
The quiet is on purpose. Davis said they want the music — mostly jazz — to be at the forefront at Mono Tape Club, and they do their best to preserve the listening experience for all of their customers.
On two turntables and a Japanese tape deck on the bar, they play only analog media — vinyl and tapes — which embody “mono no aware,” Davis said.
“The physicality of all this is fleeting, for sure, like vinyl records, old tapes, stuff that has kind of a shelf life on it,” Davis said.
With Mono Tape Club, Davis said he and the other owners wanted to create a “meaningful, intentional space for people to experience the moment.”
Davis said that if they could only have a listening room without having to provide for themselves with a bar and coffee, they would.
But he said “there’s a desire to share that with people, to invite people into that experience, to show people — Utahns, especially — that there are other types of experiences than just loud party bars,“ he said.
Mono Tape Club is open Sunday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5 p.m.-midnight. The owners may expand hours soon. Follow Mono Tape Club on Instagram at @monotapeclub.
