The Hotel Cafe is closing in 2026. Inside its relocation plans

When musician Carey Brothers learned that the Hotel Cafe was closing, he felt like he was told his parents were selling his childhood home.

The beloved music venue that launched the careers of then-little-known singer-songwriters Adele, Sara Bareilles and Damien Rice will close its doors in early 2026, co-founders Marco Schafer and Max Mamikunyan announced in November. For those like Brothers, who considered the Hotel Cafe their second home, the news of the closure came as a heavy blow.

Luckily for them, Schafer and Mamikunyan plan to open a new location in the nearby Lumina Hollywood tower in early 2027. The brothers stated that this was comforting, but did not provide complete comfort.

“Yes, they are buying a great new house, but it’s not our house,” he said.

Elected “mayor of the hotel café,” the Brothers discovered the establishment in Hollywood before it even had a liquor license. In those days, the café had a BYOB policy and sold patrons ice buckets to cool the alcohol they brought with them, and jazz legends bursting out of local bars after last call ended their evenings with a 3 a.m. jam session in the hotel café's piano room (or smoking room, depending on who you ask).

According to Schafer, every penny they made went back to the venue.

The brothers always compared the hotel café of that era to the “Cheer” with guitars, where he could go on any evening and a dozen of his closest friends would be there. Eagles songwriter Jack Tempchin said it was the closest thing to the front bar at the Troubadour in the '70s.

“Of course, no one became an Eagle, but the spirit was the same,” Brothers said.

Start at Cahuenga Boulevard

The owners attribute much of Hotel Cafe's success to good timing.

At the turn of the century, Mamikunian said, “The word on the streets of Los Angeles was that it was an industrial city and music venues didn't operate here.”

Mamikunyan, on the other hand, believed that the city was teeming with talent, but there was nowhere for it to develop. Judging by the long list of musicians who flocked to the hotel cafe in those early years, his hunch was correct.

“We did it exactly when it was supposed to happen,” he said.

For independent artist Kevin Garrett, Hotel Cafe was a “gym” where he could flex his creative muscles and experiment with his sound without judgment. For local folk singer Lucy Clearwater, it was a sign that moving to Los Angeles was the right decision for her career.

And for Ingrid Michaelson, the video was ahead of its time in championing female artists. When Hotel Cafe asked Michaelson to headline the 2008 Women's Tour, she thought, “When is that going to happen, other than Lilith Fair?”

In Michaelson's native New York, there were several venues where aspiring musicians performed: Living Room, Bitter End, Kenny's Castaways.

“But in L.A. there was really only a Hotel Cafe,” said Michaelson, who wrote such 2000s hits as “The Way I Am” and “You and I.” “So it was a distillation of all the L.A. singer-songwriters coming through one port.”

Through musical generations

According to Schafer, over the 25 years of work at the Hotel Cafe, several generations of musicians have changed. Production manager Gia Hughes calls them “graduating classes.”

In the Brothers' day, it was Joshua Radin, Barey, Meiko and other late-2000s songwriters whose music regularly appeared on shows like Grey's Anatomy — or, in the Brothers' case, the indie cult classic Garden State, directed and starring fellow Northwestern alum Zach Braff.

This was followed by the residences of notables Johnnyswim and J.P. Sachs, and later the Clearwater Folksters and her close confidante Rhett Madison. Clearwater said that during her tenure, she often joined her fellow performers on stage to sing background vocals or play a violin solo.

“Every four years there’s a new community,” Hughes said. “And that’s different, but that’s not true either.”

That's why Schafer and Mamikunian aren't afraid of losing the magic they created in Cahuenga. In their opinion, it was never limited to space itself.

“I remember when we first started talking about expanding the hotel cafe and everyone said, 'Don't do it. You're going to destroy what you have,” Schafer said, referring to the acquisition of an additional space next door in 2004. (They expanded again in 2016 with an addition to the Second Stage, taking up about half the capacity of the main stage.)

“When we did that, it really changed the room for the better and gave us access to bigger artists without losing the intimacy,” he said of the expansion.

Schafer and Mamikunyan thought they had outgrown the Cahuenga space and had been contemplating their move for a long time. This year, logistics have been lined up, Mamikunyan said.

“There was nothing dramatic about it,” he said. It was just time.

Hughes called the move “an opportunity to find a space that can challenge us a lot more over the long term”: more parking, increased indoor capacity, greater accessibility.

A new beginning is just around the corner

Zoning permits are still pending for a new building at Lumina Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard, a high-rise residential building. set to update from Morguard Corp. And while the new location is slated to open in 2027, the timeline depends on upcoming zoning hearings expected in March or April, Mamikunyan said.

But Schafer and Mamikunyan chose to announce the closure while the details were still being worked out, rather than wait and risk a leak. In addition, this way both artists and patrons have time to say goodbye.

After Clearwater heard the news, she rushed to the weekly Monday-Monday presentation and immediately felt like she was transported back to 2017, when she spent more than four nights a week at the establishment.

“So many of my old friends from that time – some of [whom] I lost touch with them — I saw them all there,” said the folk singer, who grew up in the Bay Area. “You could feel that everyone was enjoying it so much.”

The singer said she couldn't help but wonder if things would have turned out differently if people had acted this way before Shafer and Mamikunyan made their choice. But that evening, sipping red wine in the green room, she felt happy just to be there.

“That tree, that bar, the chairs backstage, the little lanterns,” she said. “I will miss the way it looks and smells, but people, it will never go away.”

Goodbye for now

Earlier this month, Hotel Cafe held its latest holiday event in Cahuenga. Hughes, with the help of her interior designer sister Nina Hughes, spent hours decorating the halls that day with carnival lights and lots of streamers.

Even before the evening's performances began, attendees were clinking glasses and hugging tightly, as befits the last day of summer camp.

“It's going to be a love fest,” Hughes predicted.

As heartfelt as the band's performances were that night, bartender Dan Shapiro said growing sentimentality on stage has been the norm for weeks.

“People are always singing the praises of this place,” Shapiro said with a laugh. Surveying the line-up on display at the bar, he said he'd bet his money on entertainer Lily Kershaw shedding a few tears. Fellow bartender Dave Greve agreed.

Despite everything, Kershaw didn't cry as she led the crowd in a performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's “Our House” hours later. Subsequent artists continued to stick to the theme with songs consisting of resonant lyrics such as “Goodbye stranger / I like to think I know you best” and “Hold on tight / Don't let go.”

While the Brothers chanted tributes, he closed his eyes as if in prayer.

James Babson, a longtime doorman at the hotel's café, said his employees and patrons always treated the performers with respect. For some, he says, the listening experience is “spiritual.”

“Maybe they don't go to church, so they have a sense of community and transcendence when this song touches them on that level and takes them somewhere else,” he said.

Peter Malek felt it when he first walked into the hotel cafe 20 years ago. Succumbing to this feeling, he began to visit this place several times a week. Sometimes he didn't even go inside, content to chat for hours with Babson at the door; other evenings were spent in staff offices studying for medical school exams.

According to Malek's last count, he had been to the hotel cafe 1,333 times. While he was saddened when he heard the news of the move — months before almost everyone else knew about it — he said he doesn't expect Schafer and Mamikunian to replicate what they built at the Cahuenga facility.

Instead, Malek said, he was left “happy to have witnessed it.”

Throughout the night at the Hotel Cafe's holiday party, patrons wondered whether penultimate performer Dan Wilson of the pop-rock band Semisonic would play “that song.” No one should have said that name.

When Wilson finally sang the magic words, “Closing time, open all the doors / And let you out into the world,” the audience erupted in applause.

The brothers almost burst into tears, but he controlled himself. There will be time for this later.