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Owner of Bright Spot Coffee Eli Thompson during a pop-up marketplace (Photo pleasantness Bright Spot Coffee)
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Bright Spot Coffee’s Her House blend (Photo pleasantness Bright Spot Coffee)
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Bright Spot Coffee’s stirring storefront on Lakeside Avenue (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
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Bright Spot Coffee will be located in Lakeside Towne Center. (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
Move over beer, there’s a new moody in town, and it’s bean-based.
Eli Thompson, 25, hopes to emanate village connectors at Bright Spot Coffee, a stirring roastery and cafeteria during 6114 Lakeside Ave. approaching to open a doors by mid-summer.
“A coffee emporium is a village hub, and if a village doesn’t have a coffee shop, it’s lacking this outrageous value that people are looking for and ring so easy with,” explains Thompson, whose space will be located in Lakeside Towne Center, joining neighbors including Final Gravity Brewing Co., shops JujuBee’s and Twig, and a Lakeside Farmers Market.
Thompson’s vigilant is to curate an inclusive, enchanting sourroundings where business ask questions. One of a ways he aims to do so is through coffee flights — a sampling of several residence blends — that inspire scrutiny and poise of coffee’s several shades and scents, sourness levels, season profiles, and general origins.
“Our marketplace is perplexing to strike a people who maybe would adore to try coffee like booze though are intimidated by a normal approach they are treated during a coffee emporium or by that [coffee] denunciation barrier. I’m perplexing to make it simple, easy and experience-driven,” he says. “Coffee nerd stuff,” adds Thompson, laughing.
Bright Spot also skeleton to horde cupping events, live music, latte art chuck downs and residence roasting observations where java enthusiasts can take a deeper demeanour during how coffee is made.
The East Carolina University alumnus and Outer Banks internal has always sought a caffeine fix, though over a years kindly graduated from Starbucks and Keurigs to Aeropresses and perfecting a crater of Costa Rican. After relocating to Richmond with his mother in 2017, he landed a barista job. When a owners went on vacation, Thompson began to dally in roasting.
“After a full week of roasting on my own, we knew that a coffee attention was accurately where we wanted to spend my time, learning, flourishing and sharing,” he says.
In Mar 2018 he attended a coffee trade uncover and took an complete daylong course. Following a lecture, Thompson listened a difference of his instructor relate in his head: “You’ve got to be a splendid mark in your customers’ day and in a community.” The idea, and a name for his micro-roasting facility, began to brew.
“I knew we wanted to name it something that evoked a feeling of positivity and happiness,” he says.
Bright Spot Coffee launched this past May. Although Thompson has been roasting for a final year and selling coffee during Birdhouse Farmers Market and several village pop-up events, he is vehement to embark entirely on his buzzy journey.
Roasting will be finished on site regulating a drum spit that works to safeguard correct feverishness send and full growth of a coffee’s flavor.
“Our priority is to safety and arrangement a healthy flavors benefaction in a uninformed coffee stand as it becomes a final product,” he explains.
Another priority is sustainability and reliable standards. Thompson partners usually with farmers who are being paid a satisfactory share for their crops. He says his idea is to settle clever partnerships and relations with coffee farmers and producers worldwide.
“We wish to be means to quietly contend because we know that coffee is something great, not usually taste-wise though with a sustainability of a industry,” he says. “We adore suggestive we can make that attribute miles and miles and miles away, and make it as suggestive as someone in front of us, and yield an event for other people to feel that way.”
Thompson’s laid-back inlet and beach upbringing will be reflected in a shop’s aesthetic. The interior will be an oasis of sea colors, healthy woods and light, and lots of white — he describes a idea as purify and comfortable. A window will offer guest a perspective of a roasting process.
The splash menu will be minimalist, conscious and some-more in balance with blends and sourcing than with specialty lattes and syrups, a obvious charity of coffees from around a globe.
Bright Spot skeleton to partner with internal bakeries and offer a tiny menu featuring pastries, baked products and sandwiches, with vegan and gluten-free options. Thompson now creates an disdainful blend, Gnarly, for a vegan fritter pop-up Gnarly Girls Baking Co., and skeleton to lift some of their products.
In a meantime, Richmonders can keep their eyes peeled for Bright Spot’s famous VW train creation pop-up appearances around town, quite in Lakeside.
Bright Spot Coffee’s hours are still to be announced.