Mt. Airy Coffee Company has started a GoFundMe after experiencing electrical issues in its building.

After opening early last year, Christopher Petersen, owner of Mt. Airy Coffee Company, wanted to expand his menu, offering breakfast sandwiches and eventually in-house baked goods.

However, shortly after, he discovered that his building’s electrical capacity could not support running the full-sized ovens enough to meet the demand.

“When we first realized the problem that we had, we had to shut down the oven completely. So we had to take our breakfast sandwiches off, which was a big disappointment to our customers, because they loved them,” Petersen told the Local. “Our sales really dipped, and our customers were asking all the time, ‘When will you get the sandwiches back?’”

A few months later, he was able to move some equipment to fit a smaller oven, bringing the breakfast sandwiches back. But the smaller oven can’t meet the demand and has slowed down the whole process.

“It was really almost immediate after, within like a week, we saw a dip in sales,” Petersen said. “We’re seeing a little recovery, but we still have a ways to go.”

Solving the electrical issue has been a lengthy and expensive ordeal. Petersen has spent a lot of money already, consulted electrical engineers and PECO on the process, and is nearing the final hurdle.

The total cost of the repair and upgrade will be around $12,000, Petersen said. For a small business whose sales were down from the ordeal, the cost led Petersen to turn to the community for fundraising.

Starting a GoFundMe in November, Petersen has already raised almost $8,000.

“The regular customers were extremely helpful before we went more public with the GoFundMe campaign. So they were really helpful to kind of give us a little kick start,” Petersen said. “We’ve since sent [the GoFundMe] out to our entire customer base.”

Entering the final stage of the upgrade starts early this week, with Petersen aiming to keep the GoFundMe running through December to recoup some of the cost.

Along with the cost of the project, approval from PECO caused a significant delay.

“It was very confusing, complicated, and we were not getting a ton of communication from PECO,” Petersen said. “It’s been five and a half months. My electrician came in, got just the infrastructure of the new system set up, and then we were literally waiting on PECO for several weeks.”

Growing the business

Petersen and his wife started Mt. Airy Coffee in February 2024 in the heart of West Mt. Airy at 7101 Emlen St. They moved to Mt. Airy in 2018, after living in West Philadelphia for 21 years.

The community is “what makes this business go,” Petersen said. “They’ve come in and supported as customers, and now with the GoFundMe. We’re not a shop without this neighborhood.”

Maintaining the menu with the smaller oven, Petersen has not been able to expand the menu to match his vision.

“It’s very small, it’s very inefficient, it really can’t do some of the other things that we want to do in terms of baking and prep,” he said. “It just slowed us down. So we’ve had to do a lot of workarounds, and we’re doing okay, but, you know, we need the bigger oven back to build more efficiencies here.”

After the electrical work is done, Petersen hopes to expand the menu.

“I want to do more with lunch items and do some baked goods, and make some of the baked goods in-house, some pastries, sweet breads, cookies, that sort of thing... I have some additional sandwiches in mind that I’d like to do. Maybe put a soup on the menu, a tomato soup,” Petersen said. “We want to expand that menu a little bit and do more in-house baking, just to save money and be a little more creative than what we get right now.”

Anyone interested in donating to the GoFundMe can search Power Up Mt. Airy Coffee Co. on GoFundMe.com.

Tommy Tucker can be reached at Tommy@Chestnuthilllocal.com.