Colectivo Coffee (Wicker Park) is a cafe located in Chicago’s trendy Wicker Park neighborhood. Read on to learn everything you need to know about Colectivo Coffee (Wicker Park).
Review Summary
- 12oz Coffee $2.25; 12oz Latte $3.95 (pre-tax)
- Good for working
- Solid Lunch and All Day Breafast Menu
- Extensive Seating with lots of Variety
Location and Hours
Colectivo Coffee (Wicker Park) is located at 1211 N Damen Ave and is open daily from 6:30AM to 9PM. The entrance is on Damen, just north of Division Street.
Menu and Prices
Colectivo Wicker Park has one of the most extensive coffee and food menus you’ll find in Chicago. For a chain of its reputation, the extensive menu might actually be unmatched in the city.
We’ll start with beverages…
Besides a full espresso menu, there’s also a tea menu, a smoothie menu, a blended menu (including frappe), and a lengthy Featured Drinks menu with items like Cold Brew Horchata and Pie Spice Cappuccino.
Seasonal drinks are also available. When I visited in October the options were Candied Apple Latte and Spiced Apple Cider.
The cafe offers four sizes–8oz, 12oz, 16oz, and 20oz, but I can’t speak to whether every beverage is available in those sizes. At the medium (12oz) size, some pre-tax prices are:
- Coffee – $2.25
- Latte – $3.95
- Cold Brew (one size, 16oz) – $3.65
- Tea – $2.80
Beer is also available.
The food menu is equally impressive. For starters, there is a typical offering of cafe pastries, pictured above.
All-Day breakfast includes three burritos, three bowls, and three “classics.” All items are under $10, and they include vegan, vegetarian, dairy free, and gluten free options.
The “Cafe Eats” menu has six sandwiches and three wraps/bowls, and includes more traditional lunch items, like a Turkey Club, along with more interesting items like the Cauliflower Banh Mi.
Finally, there is a specials menu with three special breakfast items, three lunch items, and a soup/salad of the day.
Whole bean coffee is available for around $14 / lb. They also sell a variety of merchandise.
Cafe, Wifi, and Power
The cafe is located on Damen just north of Division Street. It is about a ten-minute walk south from the Damen Blue Line station or a ten minute walk west from the Division Blue Line station.
My first thought walking into Colectivo Wicker Park was “how did I not know about this place?” I’m relatively up to date on Chicago’s cafe scene, so it’s shocking to me to discover a respected coffee shop with 100+ seats that I’d never visited.
Turns out the cafe just opened at the beginning of summer 2019, so I’m not too behind the curve. Anyways, the size is definitely impressive. I haven’t counted all the seats, but either “100” or “enough” are good estimates, but more on this in the next section.
Wifi is password protected, but the password is prominently on display. Notably, the wifi is turned off from 10AM to 2PM on Saturdays.
The speed clocked in at only 9 Mbps. This is good for most tasks, well less than the speed recommended to stream Netflix 4K, but an acceptable speed for a huge, relatively busy cafe.
Finally, your wifi connection will need to reset every hour. After an hour, it stops working, and the best way to reset it is just to disconnect and reconnect, triggering a new splash page.
Plenty of seats don’t have outlets, but plenty do (because, you know, there are plenty of seats). I’d guess about 40% of the indoor seats have outlet access. These spots are coveted, though, so you maybe have to wait a few minutes to nab one.
Cafe Experience
Colectivo’s gigantic cafe is quite the space. Right off the bat, the variety of options are great. There is outdoor seating and indoor seating. There are benches and chairs. There is an upstairs loft portion overlooking the rest of the cafe. There’s even a cozy fireplace section.
The downside to a gigantic, segmented cafe is that people in prime seats will feel little pressure to ever leave. Outlets and the fireplace go first, followed by the loft seats.
That said, with so much seating, you’ll rarely struggle to find a seat, and at least some seat that isn’t just a small table in the middle of the cafe should be open for you.
Colectivo encourages coffee orders in for-here mugs, discounting those orders by about a quarter. If you order food you’ll be given a table number to bring to your seat.
When I visited, the cafe maintained a reasonable volume despite being pretty full. I’ve read complaints that it can be loud, though, and given its capacity I wouldn’t count on it ever being quiet.
About Colectivo
Colectivo was founded in 1993 as Alterra Coffee Roasters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 2013, the chain renamed itself Colectivo. Colectivo currently operates 16 cafes, including five in Chicago. They roast their own coffees at a Milwaukee roastery.