THE BLOG

1624 Grand Is Actually Coming Soon, Here's Some Info About It

So, we’re opening a new flagship location for Messenger Coffee Co. Well, it’s a cafe, wholesale coffee roasting facility, cupping lab, office, grain mill, sourdough bread and pastry bakery, good place to go to lunch spot, rooftop deck with a fireplace, future site of delicious pairing and prix fixe dinners - Yeah, seriously! All with an open transparent floor plan so we can share it with you.

 



This space began as a dream: let’s create an architecturally beautiful and aesthetically comfortable space to feature what we believe to be some of the best coffee and food anywhere in the world. Our sister company Ibis Bakery was a natural partner for this concept because, well, pretty much no one does bread and pastry better than they do. Their unrelenting quest for perfection in the bakery matches our desire to deliver a quality coffee experience from our farm partners. We worked with the talented people at Boor Bridges from the very earliest stages of this idea, and they proposed that we tell this story architecturally by creating a vertical connectedness between the coffee roasting floor and the bakery floor to express the shared vision and natural pairing of Ibis bread+pastry and Messenger coffee. This move, amongst other thoughtful design throughout the space, brings a unique and powerful feel to the space. We can't wait for you to see it.

 


There’s an incredible amount of empty jargon in marketing a company these days. I guess it’s important I mention it because I’m about to talk about how cool this thing is that we’re doing, and I’m going to try to be as factual as possible without waxing marketing company lingo too much.


In our partnership with Ibis Bakery, at our 1624 Grand space, we’re:

...milling grains in-house to make our own flour. This gives us access to making bread at a level that we’ve been dreaming about since the beginning. We can bring in local farmers’ grains and mill it exactly at the right fineness for our bakery products. Not only is this tastier, it’s more nutritious. Not to mention, we can bring in a much wider variety of grains, including ancient grains, and treat them perfectly through the whole process.

 

 

 

...expanding our wholesale roasting. Right now our roasting machine is running from sunup to well past sundown most days. We need a larger (but still fully manual) roasting machine so that Kiersten and the team can roast more coffee while maintaining the level of roast quality and hands-on control that we insist upon.

 

 

 ...able to host coffee events/tastings/parties. We want both our wholesale accounts and the daily coffee drinker to be able to show up and taste coffees, learn about processing if they want to, and experience good coffee the way we think it should be served. Be on the lookout for public cuppings!

 

 

...serving good food and coffee! What could be better than an Ibis food menu with top notch Messenger beverages? I don’t know. Right now, it sounds perfect.

 

 

One of the most wonderful things about serving food and drinks is that you have the opportunity to foster a community. By bringing people together around the table, you spark conversations, ideas, breakthroughs, counseling, laughter, tears and creativity — the good stuff. Super fancy food isn’t required to create this environment, but it helps if what you’re serving is delicious. And, ethically, if you can do it while respecting the earth, the farmers, nature, etc., you absolutely should. From a craftsmanship perspective (think Jiro) we believe that if you’re going to do something you should try to do it at as high a level as you can.


“Artisan” gets thrown around a lot these days, but we’ve spent the last several years working long days and nights in pursuit of bakery and coffee excellence, and now we want to share our practice with you. We’re not done yet, and we hope to continue to improve. We want to bring you into the process we walk in daily by showing our work and offering an environment you can bring your friends into to learn, witness, and also just hang out and enjoy awesome food and drinks. A real good cafe for the people.


 

We want to open up our process to everyone, so you can experience where your coffee and food comes from in an environment where you can hang out and ultimately enjoy awesome food and company.

Can't wait to see you there 👋,

~ Trevor, Messenger Coffee


PS: When will it be open? Launching something complicated like this project is always subject to change, but we’re looking at early October right now. 

PPS: Sign up for our mailing list below to find out first about our grand opening celebration, and get vouchers for free coffee at the new space!