Blue Foot Cafe opens in downtown Wareham

Katie Gallagher has always worked in the hospitality industry, she said, often as a bartender, though she’s more of a morning person.

So when the opportunity came to open a cafe and say goodbye to 4 a.m. closing shifts, she took it and opened her own cafe in downtown Wareham.

The Blue Foot Cafe opened on Jan. 26 at 379 Main St.

A neon blue sign on the cafe’s wall reading “Look at all the Boobies” is a quote from the BBC documentary “Planet Earth,” Gallagher said.

“I’ve always loved the birds,” she said, sitting in one of The Blue Foot Cafe’s cozy armchairs.

The cafe’s name and logo — a waddling blue-footed booby, the tropical bird — pays homage to the “ridiculous” birds, she says, which she has an affinity for.

Its menu offers light, savory breakfast and lunch options for diners looking for a filling pick-me-up meal. There’s smoothies with mix-ins like acai berries, mango, pineapple and blue spirulina. One of the cafe’s smoothie bowls, the “Galapagos,” has a fruit base topped with strawberries, banana, sun butter, hemp hearts, coconut and granola.

Customers can also try one of the cafe’s several kinds of toast, like the avocado toast topped with edamame, feta and crushed-red pepper, or the more simple sun butter toast.

Gallagher said one of Blue Foot Cafe’s options that she feels isn’t offered elsewhere is its savory oat bowls. The cafe sells two oatmeals, one sweet and topped with sugar, coconut and berries, and one savory, topped with cherry tomatoes, garlic sauerkraut and a fried egg.

“It gives you a good, clean energy,” she said of the oat bowl. “It’s really filling, but you don’t feel heavy or greasy afterwards.”

She said she doesn’t want to intrude on other downtown restaurants, so she has no plans right now to serve some traditional breakfast items, like bacon-egg-and-cheese diner dishes.

In the future though, Gallagher said she plans to partner with Forno Bakery to bring more fresh baked goods into the cafe, and Forno’s biscotti are already sold at the counter. The cafe’s coffee is sourced from Jim’s Organic Coffee.

With a combination of good food, good coffee and a comfy atmosphere, Gallagher says she wants the cafe to feel like a homey place people can meet, work and spend time together.

For her, the cafe is literally homey — the soft, cushy chairs and sofas are the ones she had in her home before selling it. With more people working remotely and looking for office space they might not have inside their homes, she said the cafe can be a space for them, too.

“People are really grateful just to see the space turning around,” Gallagher said. “They’re really excited about Main Street coming back.”