Two local coffee shops are adding more stores to keep consumers caffeinated amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Although some local restaurants are closing or limiting dine-in options this year, Mean Mug and Goodman Coffee are expanding with new locations.
Goodman opened a new retail coffee shop adjacent to its wholesale roaster in St. Elmo this week and Mean Mug plans to open another store in Fort Oglethorpe this fall and another outlet in East Brainerd in spring 2021.
"We saw that there's a demand for what we're doing," Mean Mug Co-owner Monica Smith said. "We're kind of at the point where we've almost outgrown the amount of business we can do out of our Southside location, and now our North Shore location is almost doing as much business as the Southside."
The first Mean Mug opened on Main Street nine years ago, followed by a second location that opened on the North Shore in 2017. That same year, Mean Mug started roasting its own coffee.
Ian Goodman, who started roasting coffee in 2015 and opened the first Goodman coffee shop in Warehouse Row in 2016, said the new St. Elmo outlet is designed to tap into that area's growing community appeal during a time when downtown offices are remaining largely empty as many workers shift to remote work from home.
"Opening multiple locations has been part of our business plan for a while, but with everything going on with the COVID-19 virus, our downtown location has suffered a lot with fewer downtown workers these days," Goodman said. "We're probably down 55% from normal at Warehouse Row and we think St. Elmo will do better with all that is going on in that area. Where you are located today, I think, will play a big difference in how you do with revenues."
Photo by Dave Flessner / Cosi Goodman, right, and Tori Ventzel, staff the new Goodman Coffee shop in St. Elmo, which opened Monday.Smith said she thinks both of the existing Mean Mug locations have been even busier than before the pandemic. Mean Mug already did a lot of to-go orders prior to the pandemic, but its carryout business increased during the shutdown when the coffee shop introduced online ordering and added a second third-party delivery partner.
The business was one of the few that stayed open throughout the shutdown, and she said they have gained a lot of regulars for that reason.
Smith said she and co-owner Matt Lewis were looking for a location in Fort Oglethorpe for several years before they found their chosen location on Battlefield Parkway on the former site of Holcomb's Garden Center.
The Fort Oglethorpe store will be the only Mean Mug with a drive-thru.
"There's a lot of pass-through traffic, with people going to different areas of Chattanooga," Smith said of the Fort Oglethorpe location.
The new Mean Mug in East Brainerd will be inside the Aloft by Marriott Chattanooga/Hamilton Place currently under construction near the Cheesecake Factory by Hamilton Place mall.
Along with its coffee roasted in-house, Mean Mug is known for its homemade baked goods, including made-from-scratch biscuits and cinnamon rolls - which were featured on the Cooking Channel TV show "Cheap Eats."
Smith said she and Lewis are considering opening Mean Mug locations outside the Chattanooga area at some point in the future.
Contact Emily Crisman at ecrisman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6508. Follow her on Twitter @emcrisman.