Grace Coffee Co. photos
Grace Coffee Co. got a blast of pre-opening publicity when the owners misunderstood city regulations and had painters transform the exterior of its new space at 417 State St. by painting the old brick house black. The paint was promptly removed and the old cream brick is back on the former home to the Sacred Feather hat shop and one of the last remaining houses on State Street.
The interior, however, is black throughout, leavened with white flooring and accents and some touches of plant life — succulents — in small ceramic wall pockets. The nooks and crannies of the old house’s floor plan create a quirky and far from cookie-cutter space.
While the paint misstep gave Grace early fame, the emphasis now is on coffee, with a fairly austere menu of classic preparations, a small menu of breakfasty sandwiches, and a couple of toasts and acai bowls. Teas are organic. Coffee beans are from Portland, Oregon’s Heart Coffee Roasters. The star of the place, however, is a big and unflappable Bernese Mountain dog named Pablo — a service dog who belongs to the owners Mallory Orr and Carlos Falcon and is often around as a value-added perk. For dog-loving java fiends, anyway.
True Coffee Roasters, which closed at 6250 Nesbitt Road in Fitchburg last August, will be back. “That was a heartbreak,” says co-owner Stephen Yeazel. “After eight years, we had built up a clientele.” But there was a “perfect storm” of a rent increase at the same time that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation predicted that traffic on Nesbitt Road would remain down about 30 percent from pre-construction levels even after the completion of nearby road reconstruction.
Though Yeazel tried to find a new location on the west side, “nothing came up.” He found a promising fit in a new development called The Current on Broadway at Bridge Road in Monona. “It’s a great under-served neighborhood, it’s near the Lake Monona bike path, there will be a park right behind it and they plan on having skating in the winter,” says Yeazel, ticking off the many plusses of the new site. Moreover, the coffee shop will be next to a third location of Forage Kitchen and a second site for Sun Prairie’s Buck and Honey’s. The build-out is about to begin in a serious fashion, says Yeazel, who hopes to be open by the end of summer: “We’re very excited to have a new home in a new space.”
