Last month, Bob Denison and Beck Hammontree, who own the Victoria Park location of Brew Urban Cafe, quietly purchased the shop on Himmarshee from Rick and Dede Hunter.
Hammontree confirmed the sale to New Times today. "It's a good store," said Hammontree of the downtown location. "We'll try not to mess it up."
Among the short-term changes:
Brew folks will open earlier than the 7:30 a.m. door time on weekends,
said Hammontree. He also confirmed they'll bring over the pour-over
one-cup brew method
that's available at the Victoria Park location as well as the esoteric siphon
brew, specially brewed for Modernist Cuisine coffee snobs.
In both shops, "We'd really like for things to move along faster once a customer orders a coffee," he said.
In
addition to selling Chicago's Intelligensia coffee, Hammontree
confirmed there's talk of carrying roasts from the big three
sustainable, fair-labor, single-origin coffee companies, the others
being North Carolina's Counter Culture and Portland's Stumptown. Even though the three companies are "friendly colleagues," confirms a Counter
Culture spokesperson, Hammontree says it's a delicate segue to carry
more than one brand. "There are steps we'd have to take to carry these
other brands," he said. "Their grinds are different. And our allegiance
has been with Intelligensia."
Also in the works: Brew's Victoria Park
location will sell beer and wine once it nabs the license. It'll also expand
its craft beer offerings in both stores, with the possibility of
carrying a whole lineup of craft beers from, say, Oskar Blues.
Bob
Denison purchased the Victoria Park Brew location in 2009, with
Hammontree signing on as a partner this year. In his past life,
Hammontree had been a financial consultant.
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