Brickhouse Coffee celebrates grand opening

Writer / Matt Roberts
Photographer /Brian Brosmer

If you were opening a brand new, independently-owned coffee shop, would you open it 1,000 feet east of one of the highest-grossing Starbucks outlets in the Indianapolis area?

Jared Stayton would.

“I love it”, he says. “We’ll follow wherever Starbucks is, because they’ve done all the market research. Besides, Starbucks paved the way for guys like us to do old-world style coffee roasting. It’s like craft beer. Some guys still drink Miller Lite, but there’s a growing segment of the population that loves small-batch brewing.

“It used to be that people would drink anything – McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, Maxwell House – but then they taste ethically-sourced, properly roasted coffee that’s prepared well, and they can taste the difference.”

Brickhouse Coffee opened its first retail location in August located in the former Jonathan Byrd’s Cafeteria building. The business grew out of the Stayton family’s mission effort in Spain.

Jared and Lora Stayton met in Bloomington and occasionally thought about opening a coffee house on the Indiana University campus. After they got married, they went on a mission trip to Spain to assist with a fitness facility in a community center there. After the center opened, the expansion plans included a coffee house.

Jared and Lora came home to Indiana with their two daughters so Jared could attend barista school. When they went to Spain to help open the coffee shop they encountered visa problems. So, they returned to Indiana to pursue coffee roasting here.

“We’ve been roasting coffee for four years now,” Jared says. “We started with a 1912 coffee roaster in an old brick house at our church’s property. It used to be a ministry of our church community. But I wanted to move it off the church property, so we got our church’s blessing to take it here, and that removed a financial burden from the church.”

When the Staytons decided to expand the business into retail, they began looking for a space that was big enough for both the roastery and the coffeehouse and could accommodate delivery of 1500-pound sacks of coffee.

“We needed semi-accessibility to deliver the coffee beans,” Jared says. “And when my partner showed me this space, we felt like it was a good fit.”

Brickhouse celebrated its grand opening October 21. Patrons can enjoy a relaxed family atmosphere with coffee roasted on site.

“Most coffee places in Indy close by six or seven o’clock,” Jared says. “We’re open until 9 p.m. on weeknights and 10 on Saturdays because we want to provide that night time coffeehouse where you can have a game night. We’re partnering with local restaurants like Jockamo’s Pizza so you can order their food and have it delivered here.

“Six days a week this is our mission field. It’s not a Christian coffeehouse, per se, but we hope to build relationships in the community,” Jared says.

Brickhouse Coffee is located at 100 Byrd Way in Greenwood or you can give them a call at 317-550-0034.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Send me your media kit!

hbspt.forms.create({ portalId: "6486003", formId: "5ee2abaf-81d9-48a9-a10d-de06becaa6db" });