Bean and Brew at 97 East Main St., a coffee shop local to Batavia, has put up a sign on a neighboring building that reads “Restaurant Expansion Coming Soon.”
Bean and Brew at 97 East Main St., a coffee shop local to Batavia, has put up a sign on a neighboring building that reads “Restaurant Expansion Coming Soon.”
Bean and Brew is looking to create a more sit-down-style restaurant next to their existing location.
Right on Riverside Drive which overlooks the river, Bean and Brew at 97 East Main St., a coffee shop local to Batavia, has put up a sign on a neighboring building that reads “Restaurant Expansion Coming Soon.”
The coffee shop, established in 2019, also painted the outside of the building from a gray that the previous owners had to an orange and tan style that reflects the original coffee shop building’s inside. There are now fogged-up doors with the Bean And Brew logo printed proudly.
The Sun interviewed the restaurant owner, Matt Ecker, to get more details about what the future of this new location, at 25 S. Riverside Dr., will look like.
Is this your first expansion?
It’s our first experience. This expansion project is gonna be a little different, because obviously we opened up the other building with Bean and Brew four years ago, so with this expansion comes a much bigger restaurant feel. So it’s somewhat like our second venture, but it’s tied all in with this main area of historic Batavia. So they’re really both the same building, we’re just gonna blow it up into a bigger restaurant.
What are some new features that people would be excited about in the new building?
My biggest one is that it’s gonna give people more of a feel where they come in, they sit down, and they are served, rather than ordering from the front. Some other things and features that I am really going to enjoy letting people see are the glass garage doors that open up across the back. And it’ll have a deck across the back of the building that overlooks the water. So we’ll be able to walk right in and out of the back of the building with glass garage doors that roll up. The other (big feature) is that we will be able to have music in here when we have rain outdoors. It won’t cancel the music. So we’ll be able to do entertainment in here as far as music, and we’ll do comedy nights as well.
What food/drink do you plan on selling in the new location?
Well, we have the wood-fired oven pizza that was delivered to us (…) from California. Our entire kitchen will move over here, with quesadillas, burgers, (…) but a lot of it will be reflective of the menu that we currently have, and we’ll add a few new things. Several different new appetizer choices as well. But it will be more of a sit-down type feel for a restaurant.
How big is the new building?
It’s approximately 3,400-3,500 square feet in here for seating capacity. It’s a pretty good-sized building.
What prompted the new location?
One, we love the area. Everything is going so well for Bean and Brew in its first three years that we started to look at an expansion elsewhere, but we always came back to “we love the area.” We’re right up against the water behind us, so it was a constant push to buy this (new) building from the previous owner, and after about two and a half years we just really realized that this is where we want to be.
When do you think this location will be open?
We’re working through some permitting issues right now. There are just a few things left to tackle on that permitting issue to get past, so that way we can start installing everything. Our hope is that right after the new year, we dive into it, full force. And that we are open by the end of March. So when we encounter March Madness–you see already we have all the TVs around in here– it’ll be kind of a sports bar type feel with just great food and good beer selections and whatnot.
Do you have anything else you would like to say?
Currently, we’re open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Every day we’re open for somebody to be able to stop in here and enjoy our food and coffee and beer. When we open this expansion project, we’ll carry that later into the evening. So we’ll probably be open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. But we’re gonna have to figure out what (are) the hottest spots of the day that people enjoy this, and then kinda adjust our schedule from there. But it’s a seven-day-a-week outfit that we run here, so if somebody can’t get to us during the week, they have both days of the weekend to get to us.
Bean and Brew is located at 97 East Main St. in Batavia. For more information, visit https://www.beanandbrewbatavia.com/.