Business Spotlight: Cafe 80

After years of successfully running one of the city’s most popular restaurants in Smokin’ Jack’s, Jacky Poole is launching a new venture Tuesday when he opens the latest addition to the Demopolis food service landscape.

“Just an old fashioned café look,” Poole said of the ambience he is aiming to achieve with the new restaurant. “We’ve got some retro tables, checkerboard table cloths. Come into a friendly atmosphere, sit down, visit with your friends and get a good meal.”

With Café 80, which is housed in the same building as Parr’s Chevron West where JC’s and Marengo Café once resided, Poole and his team are looking to fill a very specific need among the palates of Demopolis diners.

“Most of the guys around here are southern folks, so they like a good ham and cheese sandwich or a good bologna sandwich, something like that. So we’re going to toast it, put it on some good bread, give you some good cheddar jack cheese on it. Make it good so those guys can come in and eat. We’ll have a big, open salad bar where you can fix your own. Hopefully the ladies, school teachers and stuff, when they get a break they can run in here, fix it and go. If they want to sit down, that’s fine. If not, they can get in and get out quick. Most people just have an hour to eat. We’re trying to catch that too,” Poole said. “We’re going to offer Reuben sandwiches with a special sauce on it that nobody else does around here. And then we’re going to have a roast beef sandwich that has a special sauce on it too that I don’t think anybody else has. Then we’re going to have a couple of different breads to offer. It’s just more of a homemade style instead of a franchise style sandwich. We just try to make it good and then get our opinions from customers and try to offer what they’re looking for here.”

Café 80 will also offer some of the favorites of bygone eateries like Marengo Café as it will carry both the Triple Salad and Pasta Salad on its menu. And while some prices vary, Café 80 will offer a sandwich, a bag of chips and a tea for $8.

Café 80 opens Tuesday, Aug. 2 and will be open from 5 a.m. until 3 p.m. Monday through Friday each week.