Walk down Wydown Boulevard past Wright's Tavern on a weekday evening and you will pass a storefront that has been dark for years. It used to be a Starbucks. The corporate coffee chain closed it in 2021, tried to bring it back as a local franchise, and then walked away when that deal fell apart. For most of the past five years it has just sat there, empty, directly across the street from one of Clayton's busiest steakhouses.
That storefront is not staying empty. And it is not the only one. A few blocks away on South Bemiston, a different vacant café space has already reopened, this time with a sandwich that St. Louis diners spent two years mourning. Neither of these openings involved new construction. Both are local restaurateurs moving into buildings that already failed once, betting that the second try works better than the first. That is the story of downtown Clayton's food scene right now, and it is happening at the same time the city has scheduled almost every weekend between now and late October.
The Starbucks That Wouldn't Stay Closed
The Wydown space is becoming Gigi's Cafe, a project from Matt McGuire, the owner of Wright's Tavern and Louie, two restaurants already established in Clayton. McGuire's plan, according to filings that cleared Clayton's Plan Commission and Architectural Review Board this spring, is a 2,200-square-foot coffeehouse with about 45 seats inside plus patio seating, open starting at 7 a.m. By day it runs as a café. In the evenings it shifts into pizza and an Italian-style bar. The project headed to Clayton's City Council for final sign-off after the spring approval, and no public opening date has been announced.
What makes this worth paying attention to is not the menu. It is the location. McGuire is not opening somewhere new. He is putting his name on a spot where a national chain already tried and failed twice, directly across the street from a restaurant he already owns. That is a different kind of confidence than opening in a fresh retail pad somewhere off Highway 40. It is a bet that the two-block stretch of Wydown between Wright's Tavern and the old Starbucks has more foot traffic than the chain ever gave it credit for.
The Cubaniche Never Really Left
On South Bemiston, inside the ground floor of the Bemiston Tower, Dan Powers opened Toast & Thyme this past January. Powers is the former chef-owner of Boogaloo, the Cuban-and-seafood spot his father Tom Powers co-founded in 2005 and that Dan ran until it closed in mid-2024. Boogaloo was known for dishes that were hard to find anywhere else in the city, including a Cubaniche sandwich that developed a following before the restaurant shut down.
Toast & Thyme is not Boogaloo reborn as a full-service restaurant. It is a weekday counter-service café built for speed, aimed at office workers and anyone who wants a reliable breakfast or lunch without a wait. Powers took over the former Metro Java Coffee House space, a 45-seat room he says needed only minor updates, plus a set of new crystal-and-steel chandeliers. The Cubaniche made the move with him.
The shift in format matters more than the sandwich. Boogaloo was a destination people drove to. Toast & Thyme is built around a captive weekday population already inside the building. That is a bet on downtown Clayton's daytime office density rather than its evening dining crowd, and it is a different read on the same six blocks than McGuire is making with Gigi's.
The Same Blocks Keep Getting Reused
Put those two projects next to each other and a pattern shows up. Neither restaurant is expanding Clayton's footprint. Both are filling gaps inside a downtown core that is already built. Wright's Tavern, Louie, the old Metro Java space, the old Starbucks: all of it sits within a few short blocks of Bemiston and Wydown, and the new activity is happening by reoccupying failed real estate rather than by building anything new.
That same logic held over the summer with Clayton Restaurant Week, which ran July 20 through 26 and pulled diners through the city's existing restaurant lineup rather than introducing a new venue for the occasion. The appetite is there. What is changing is who is filling the space, not how much space exists.
A Calendar That Doesn't Let Up Through October
The city's own event lineup follows the same pattern of reusing a small set of places hard, rather than spreading thin across new ground. Here is what is left on the calendar between now and the end of October, based on the City of Clayton's events page:
- Musical Nights at Oak Knoll Park runs through September 27, a summer-long series of free, family-friendly concerts. A recent lineup included live music from Rogers & Nienhaus.
- Bow Wow Bagels & Brews happens September 26 from 8 to 10 a.m. at the Clayton Dog Park, an annual gathering where dog park members get complimentary bagels and coffee and can renew their memberships.
- The Clayton Jazz Festival, now in its sixth year and presented by Autumn Hill Records, runs Saturday, October 3, from 5 to 10 p.m.
- Party in the Patch takes over Shaw Park on Friday, October 16, from 6 to 8 p.m. for a fall celebration.
- The Clayton Harvest Festival, put on by the Clayton Chamber of Commerce, runs four days, Thursday, October 22 through Sunday, October 25. Its roots trace back to 1951, when the Clayton Merchants Association ran the city's first festival, the Cotton Festival. Today's version has drawn crowds of over 30,000 and includes a midway with carnival rides, a car and motorcycle show, and a Latin American Festival component. Parking is handled with a shuttle bus from The Church at Clayton Crossings on Clayton Boulevard.
Five events, three venues, eight weeks. Oak Knoll Park, the Clayton Dog Park, and Shaw Park do double and triple duty rather than the city building out new gathering spaces for each occasion. It is the same instinct behind Gigi's Cafe and Toast & Thyme: work the ground you already have harder instead of spreading out.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
None of this requires a car ride to a different part of the county. If you are in downtown Clayton this fall, the practical version looks something like this: a Saturday morning at the dog park on September 26 for bagels, a Friday night at Shaw Park on October 16 for Party in the Patch, and a full weekend built around the Harvest Festival's shuttle lot in late October. Toast & Thyme is already open for a weekday breakfast run before any of it. Gigi's Cafe is not open yet, but the storefront across from Wright's Tavern is no longer just sitting there.
The bigger point is what this says about how downtown Clayton is choosing to grow. It is not annexing new territory or building fresh retail pads at the edges. It is taking storefronts that already failed and events that already have a home field, and asking them to work harder. For a city with a compact downtown, that is a more efficient way to grow than spreading out, and it means the next opening or the next festival is more likely to land somewhere you already walk past than somewhere new.
If you are watching Clayton for reasons beyond a Saturday morning bagel, that same pattern of demand concentrating on a few busy blocks is worth understanding before you buy or sell here. Bethany DeMaggio tracks these shifts as part of the broader Clayton market and is glad to walk through what they mean for your specific street. Let's talk about your next move: book a free consultation or get your home valuation.
