Tim Dobel and Meredith Aldrich, co-owners of the Mocha Mott’s coffee shops in Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven, are winding up their partnership after 24 years and putting their Vineyard Haven building on the market so that Mr. Dobel can retire.

The two-story, mixed-use building at 15 Main street, which has two ground-floor retail units and two one-bedroom apartments upstairs, went on the market this month at $2.9 million.

The Mocha Mott’s at that address will remain in business until the property changes hands, Ms. Aldrich told the Gazette this week.

“We’re not closing the Vineyard Haven store until the sale is final... whether it takes six months or whether it takes two years,” she said. “I will not let it be empty.”

Mocha Mott’s at 10 Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs will continue to operate as a seasonal café, Ms. Aldrich said, and no layoffs are in the works at either location.

“I plan on keeping everyone, if they want to stay,” she said, adding that some staff members have been working at Mocha Mott’s for close to 20 years.

Co-owner Tim Dobel is looking to retire.

Ray Ewing

Co-owner Tim Dobel is looking to retire.

Ray Ewing

Selling the Vineyard Haven building will enable Ms. Aldrich to finish buying Mr. Dobel out of the business, a process that’s been underway for several years, she said.

“I’ve been the majority owner since before the pandemic,” said Ms. Aldrich, who first worked for Mr. Dobel and his then-wife, baker Mary Ellen McElroy, as a babysitter before joining the staff at their cafe at the Tisbury Inn when she was still in her teens.

“I worked for them on and off college and as a young person,” said Ms. Aldrich, who learned baking from Ms. McElroy and picked up the rest of the restaurant trade on the job.

“I did everything,” she recalled.

In 2001, Mr. Dobel tapped Ms. Aldrich to partner with him in buying Mocha Mott’s on Circuit avenue from its founder, Mott Hinkley, whose caricatured face remains the centerpiece of the company’s logo and appears on stickers that have been spotted in far-away countries as well around the Vineyard.

Sitting a spell with a good cup of coffee.

Barney Zeitz

Sitting a spell with a good cup of coffee.

Barney Zeitz

Three years later, the partners opened their Vineyard Haven shop, and in 2007 they purchased the building for $1.2 million.

The Vineyard Haven café has been open year-round, but Ms. Aldrich said Oak Bluffs economics make it a losing proposition to operate on Circuit avenue in the off-season, even though the business owns the two retail condominiums that house the shop.

“It doesn’t make money year-round,” she said.

Running a seasonal business will be plenty of work for her, Ms. Aldrich said.

“I’m not getting any younger myself, and I would like to live long enough to enjoy my own retirement someday,” she said.

Mr. Dobel, a songwriter and author whose first book is titled Bogey IS Par: The Revised Rules of Golf told the Gazette he wants to spend his retirement writing and traveling — though home will always be the Vineyard, where he raised his family and now has grandchildren, one born in September.

“I plan on sticking around the Island when I’m not traveling,” he said.

Mr. Dobel also will remain on call for Mocha Mott’s, he said.

“I will be the senior business advisor, which has always been my role,” he said.

Ms. Aldrich confirmed Mr. Dobel’s words.

“We have a really great relationship [and] our relationship is not going to end,” she said.