Chattz coffee shop reopened Monday at 2627 Broad Street after being closed since 2018.
Lisa Dunny, the owner of the Spill the Beans food truck for the past seven years, bought the Chattanooga Coffee Co. last year from company founders Eileen Mason and Evelyn Wheeler.
Mason and Wheeler started Chattanooga Coffee Co. in 2002 when the travel business they operated booking tours to the Holy Lands in the Middle East was upended by the attacks of 9/11. The two learned the art of coffee roasting and opened their retail coffee shop under the Chattz brand in the iconic flatiron-style Southern Express Building, next to the popular restaurant and bar The Pickle Barrel.
The store was supplied with coffee roasted nearby at the Chattanooga Coffee Co.'s roasting facility in the King Street warehouse building which also began supplying other clients. Mason and Wheeler moved the roaster to the current Broad Street facility in 2009 and in March 2010, it opened a new cafe in that facility to accompany the Chattz Coffee shop on Market Street.
Wheeler said in October that she is encouraged that the business she and Mason tried to build around community will continue under local ownership by another female entrepreneur interested in community and neighborhood events and activities.