Brew HaHa!, the 10-café local chain, is planning two new businesses in Trolley Square next spring-a coffee bean roastery and a fresh-food restaurant featuring a raw juice bar.
Brew HaHa!’s own blends will be available at cuppings at the roastery, at all 10 cafés, and on upscale grocers’ shelves. The company will market its beans in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Owner Alisa Morkides, who downs 16 ounces of espresso daily, plus eight ounces of a varietal a couple times a week, dubbed the roastery a “temple of coffee.”
Vim, the handle she chose for her first non-coffee restaurant, will serve up raw juice and as much locally sourced food as possible in a Mid-Atlantic climate. Morkides, who lost 100 pounds eating whole foods, plans to serve healthy food that tastes good. “I cannot sacrifice taste. You know that is not happening,” she said.
Brew HaHa! needs a zoning variance to turn the former Gilpin Mortgage site in the Rockford Shops into a roastery. If it is approved on Dec. 10, the current Brew HaHa! site in the Rockford Shops will become Vim on May 1. The roastery and flagship Brew HaHa! will open on April 1, a few yards away on the opposite side of the L-shaped shopping center. The separation was intentional.
“I want our focus to be very clear,” Morkides said. “I want the roastery to be a temple of coffee. Brew HaHa! is Brew HaHa!, so this had to be a separate thing that’s really focused on fresh juices and fresh, healthy food that tastes good.”
James H. Lee, president of the Delaware Avenue Community Association, said there were no dissenters at a November meeting on the plan. “People were really excited, just completely supportive,” he said. “Everybody’s on board. It’s going to be great.”
Morkides envisions the roastery as a community center with coffee classes, a coffee lab where customers can decide which brewing method works best with their favorite beans, and frequent cuppings-the coffee industry’s take on wine tastings.
The roastery operation will occupy 4,700 square feet, including the café, the roastery area and the warehouse. The roasting paraphernalia will be separated from the new café by a glass wall, but there will be overflow seating inside the roastery, where a chocolaty coffee smell will dominate for a few seconds after the roasted beans drop.
Brew HaHa! had been buying coffee roasted in Oregon and shipped by carrier to Delaware. “This way, we have 100-percent control over quality and freshness,” Morkides said. “Literally within hours, we will be shipping to our stores.”
She said she’s still exploring fair-trade coffees, but she said she’ll be buying from the top two to three percent of the market so farmers will be fairly compensated.
She said the café roastery, like all her cafés, will be tailored to the neighborhood.
When she discusses siphon coffee (“There’s no sediment, and you can really taste the varietals,” she said) and Hario pour-overs (“A lot of people feel its really a cleaner cup of coffee.”) Morkides sounds like the chemist she was before she earned an MBA in finance and before she vacationed in Italy in 1996.
The concept for Brew HaHa! was created while she was sipping coffee in a café in Tuscany. Before the end of the year, she had opened her first café in Greenville.
“I just love coffee so much,” she said.
What’s her favorite? “The purists will hate me for this-I like Sumatra Mandheling,” she said.
Nora Leitermann, a teacher at Wilmington Friends, welcomed the news about Vim. “I miss being in New York City. They have tons of juice bars, and that’s sort of missing around here,” she said.
Soufiane Lailani, a marketing consultant who lives on Delaware Avenue, was eager to have a local roastery. “I’m all about that,” she said.
