A Community Staple: Running Joe’s Cafe — Alumni Profile, Meaghan Sullivan ’05

Joe’s Cafe in Northampton is not where you go to get a cup of coffee. Since 1938, Northampton residents have enjoyed bowls of spaghetti in its dimly lit red leather booths. The formerly white walls, now stained nicotine-yellow, are adorned with murals of the five area colleges and pendants from various universities. Softball trophies perch behind you while you dine.

Seated across from me in a back room is Meaghan Sullivan ’05, owner of Joe’s Cafe. She is fully present in our conversation, while still being attuned to the 4 p.m. rhythms of the restaurant around her — nodding at her regulars, helping her staff seat an eight-top, and glancing up at the jingle of the door.

A Northampton Childhood

Joe’s is a family business. Sullivan grew up in Northampton, where her father, Jack Sullivan, owned and ran the restaurant. He purchased Joe’s in 1974 during a labor strike, which meant that for a while, it was just him, his business partner Gerry Rainville, and their wives staffing the place.

Although the physical space was the same, Sullivan’s father described the restaurant in the ’70s and ’80s as a little grungier and “more hardcore.”

“I mean, it was literally the other side of the tracks,” said Sullivan. Jack would tell her about regular customers such as “Lenny the Bankrobber,” dubbed that because he constantly talked about his larcenic ambitions. One day, Jack received a postcard from jail that said “I did it,” signed, Lenny the Bankrobber.

Sullivan remembers the Joe’s of her childhood as a “place of mystique.” She’d pop in every now and then and fold pizza boxes for the “old-school waitresses.”

When she wasn’t at the restaurant, Sullivan was at the Williston Northampton School, which she attended from seventh to 12th grade, and describes as an “unbelievable experience.”

Williston is where Sullivan began golfing, after she had emergency hip surgery on her second day of seventh grade. The procedure meant that she could no longer play contact sports, and took up golf at her father’s encouragement.

This ended up being a pivotal moment for Sullivan — golf would later open up the door to Amherst. At Williston, Sullivan was one of only two girls on the golf team (the program has now grown to around 20 girls). Thinking about her future collegiate athletic career, she knew she wanted a larger golf community.

Across the Bridge for College

Sullivan found that at Amherst. When she was applying to college, Amherst was the only NESCAC school that had an established women’s golf program, and so she ended up going “across the bridge for college.”

Despite being so close to home, Sullivan rarely came back to Northampton, except for long weekends or the occasional laundry trip. These days, she’s pleasantly surprised to see Amherst students come into Northampton for shows and concerts, or to shop and eat.

Sullivan’s transition to college was relatively smooth, but two weeks into her freshman year was Sept. 11, 2001. She remembers it viscerally.

“Sitting there watching this horrible thing with people you just met … I was leaving Seelye Mudd, walking across the quad to my freshman seminar class. This dude Pete Weiss [’05], who lived in Stearns and was one of 20 people I actually knew, was like ‘Oh my god, a plane just flew into the Pentagon.’ … And we walked into the classroom and sat down, and the professor wheeled out a TV where we watched the [attacks].”

A freshmen lecture from an author had been scheduled for that day, but it was turned into an all-school assembly in light of the attacks. Sullivan remembers a chaotic scene — the invited author began to speak against a military response and was interrupted by shouting students.

After this slightly tumultuous beginning, Sullivan quickly found community within her team.

“I loved all of my experience at Amherst, but I think being on that golf team was … I think probably like many athletes, that's kind of what you remember the most,” she said. “You spend so much time on the road with your teammates, and you stay connected to your teammates.”

Academically, Sullivan dipped her toes into a few majors before settling on history. She first thought she’d be an economics major, as that seemed like the thing to do, but soon realized “who I am would not have fit in with that.”

After economics, she tried out English and sociology, before settling on history due to a few “fantastic professors.” Sullivan particularly remembers a class on the history and culture of colonial New England, which involved exploring the local area. Sullivan jokes that she should’ve known better about what her future career would be, because she wrote her term paper for the class on colonial tavern owners in New England.

Sullivan tells me her dad’s favorite quip is “I sent Meaghan to Williston and Amherst thinking she’d end up on Wall Street and instead she ended up on Market Street.”

She started working at Joe’s one night a week during her junior year, which Sullivan says her mom was not thrilled about because she “saw the writing on the wall.” After graduation, Sullivan applied to a few prep school teaching jobs but ultimately knew that she belonged at Joe’s.

Taking Over the Family Business

A few years into working at the restaurant full time, Jack Sullivan began to talk about his daughter one day taking over. They set a tentative date: 2011.

Sullivan says her father wasn’t gunning for this all along. “Your parents always kind of want better for you than what they do, and so I think he wanted me to maybe go into a corporate role — he was never overly pushy about it, he was always very supportive,” she said.

It wasn’t until he saw how well-suited Sullivan was that he relented.

2011 rolled around, and as promised, Sullivan took over. Rainville fully retired and although Sullivan’s father stayed on in theory, Sullivan was running the place. She describes the time period as a “real learning experience.” She took it upon herself to learn how to do all the non-owner tasks, like loading the dishwasher, as well as those in her job description.

Ten years later, Covid provided another opportunity to re-learn the business. When everything closed down, Joe’s still had tons of food ingredients prepared, so Sullivan would spend her evenings practicing menu items. She jokes that her boyfriend must’ve been very sick of Joe’s-style food.

During Covid, Sullivan also ran pop-up nights to support Joe’s. By herself in the kitchen, she’d make a batch of something like spaghetti and meatballs and sell it until they ran out. She’s immensely grateful for the community that showed up then, and continues to show up.

“That's another thing that’s really cool about being in this industry, is being immersed in the community,” said Sullivan. “And giving back to the community … It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship. They're so great at supporting us, especially if it’s something like a pandemic, but then at the same time, it’s great to be involved [with them].”

Love for Joe’s runs deep. A customer recently told Sullivan that you could go 10 years without walking into Joe’s and a decade later the same people would still be sitting at the bar. Sullivan’s father is among them — she says he comes in every night.

“I think a lot of people rely on us as much as we rely on them,” Sullivan said.

For current Amherst students, Sullivan offers this advice: “Just don’t be afraid to break the mold. I’m a lot happier doing this than I would be poring over paperwork in a lawyer’s office or any other direction I could have gone just because that was what I was supposed to do. For years I was maybe a little bit embarrassed about it, but just grasp and take pride in whatever direction you go.”

And if you’re still feeling stuck, go and muddle it out over a bowl of spaghetti at Joe’s. Maybe you’ll get lucky and Sullivan will be sitting in the booth across from you.