INDIANAPOLIS — An organic and plant-based cafe in Broad Ripple is closing for good on Saturday.
Ezra's Enlightened Cafe announced the permanent closure on social media over the weekend, citing the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and its ramifications as the reason.
"We were doing great prior to the pandemic. We planned to be here for many years," Chef Audrey Barron wrote in an Instagram post. "These past two years of navigating constant rising food costs, food shortages, staffing shortages and more, have frankly chipped away at our sweet business. We are able to source less and less organic, many items are doubling and tripling in price and I find us at a crossroads."
The completely animal-product-free cafe opened in 2014 on Ferguson Street, sharing the same block as The Cake Bake Shop. Ezra's Enlightened was an outdoor oasis with ample seating from wood logs, a bench, and even a plant-filled patio around the back.
Ezra's had tasty health-driven food options, from full meals to snacks and even drinks, like it's vanilla sweet dream hot tonic latte.
Barron told WRTV in 2018, she founded Ezra's because she wanted to open a place in Indy where people could get clean food. Barron said the pandemic made it harder to keep Ezra's menu completely organic in her announcement of the cafe's closure.
"As more and more items on our menu are forced to be non-organic due to shortages or pricing that simply isn't possible for us to sustain, it's clear to me that it's time to move on," Barron wrote in the closing announcement. "Ezra's Cafe was all for YOU, our customers."
Ezra's last day open is Saturday, Apr. 2.
Moving forward, Barron says she is planning to write a recipe book full of some of Ezra's most popular items moving forward.
