What to know about the new coffee shop coming to Haywood Road

ASHEVILLE - A collaborative mindset has put the owners of Cooperative Coffee Roasters in the right place at the right time to open the business’s first coffee shop.

This year, Katie and Matthew McDaniel are preparing to expand from a wholesale and retail sale small batch, sustainable coffee distribution company into a coffee shop that further promotes the business’s mission to promote connectivity and improve coffee education.

“We want to have a side of our business that is public facing where we can stand and say, ‘We’re proud of this and we want you to engage with it on an individual level,' and we want to have a flagship location to celebrate the brand and celebrate the coffees and how we’re doing things, and to be able to engage with people directly,” Matthew McDaniel said.

Cooperative’s café will open at 210 Haywood Road in West Asheville. Cooperative, founded in 2019, has operated on the lower level of the building since 2020.

Cooperative will take over the upstairs venue that served as Urban Orchard Cider Co.’s taproom until it closed last November.

The cidery’s South Slope taproom remains open at 24 Buxton Ave.

Cooperative Coffee Roaster’s expansion plan

For several years, Cooperative has operated its roastery in the nearly 2,000-square-foot lower level of the Haywood Road building.

The McDaniels said the owners of Urban Orchard ― who were their landlords ― notified them about the impending taproom closure. Further conversations developed into a plan for the McDaniels to buy the building for their coffee shop.

The coffee entrepreneurs also worked with Mountain BizWorks, an organization that provides business loans and coaching to emerging and established small businesses in Western North Carolina. The group approved Cooperative’s first loan to start the business and assisted in the process of acquiring the building.

“I don’t think we could have gone to a bank and did that,” Matthew McDaniel said.

Katie McDaniel said they feel fortunate to have the entities’ support, and that Urban Orchard is family and community-focused.

“It was such a vote of confidence," she said. "This is like a miracle story."

The McDaniels said it has come full circle as the downstairs area was where Urban Orchard began their cider brewing and opened a taproom on the main level. Cooperative’s downstairs roastery will likewise expand upstairs with a coffee shop.

“They could have listed it and probably got a higher offer from some investor, but they didn’t want that to be their story,” Matthew McDaniel said. “They wanted it to be that we were their tenant and that they were able to sell the building to us. It’s amazing and a beautiful story of Urban Orchard and us with Mountain BizWorks supporting it.”

Cooperative’s community outreach

Cooperative’s coffee is used by many coffee shops and other businesses in the area, including Rite Rite (formerly Trade and Lore), Liberty House Café, Pollen, Odd’s Café and Bad Manners Coffee, and restaurants like Tastee Diner, Haywood Common, Cucina24 and Contrada.

Cooperative’s founders pride themselves on offering coffee that’s “sweet, bright and clean,” said customers also appreciate the flavor profiles and that the coffee is fresh and roasted to order.

The small but dedicated team at Cooperative works intimately with customers and has offered perks like free barista training to local coffee shop staff.

However, the team’s direct public interaction has been limited.

Cooperative welcomes wholesale and online order pickups and drop-in bag sales from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Thursday at the roastery. Online orders may be shipped to home, too.

However, Matthew McDaniel said often customers drop into the roastery expecting to find a coffee shop, which is part of the motivation for introducing one.

“A part of it is seeing a need for a retail space. This space is not set up to be a coffee shop,” he said. ”It’s not really equipped for that, but we keep getting people who want to engage with us directly.”

He said the brand has often had to take a backseat and operate behind the scenes.

“We’ve been comfortable there, but we are more confident in what we’re doing quality-wise and power and the specificity of what we’re doing in the coffee world and in the coffee community,” he said.

Matthew McDaniel said they didn’t want to step on the toes of wholesale clients, but the overwhelming response was that Cooperative’s coffee shop would be an asset and not a liability, as it may increase brand recognition and excitement when customers see Cooperative served at their cafés.

How to get a taste of Cooperative

Cooperative hosts free public coffee cuppings ― or coffee tastings ― once a month at the roastery.

The next coffee cupping will be at noon on Feb. 16.

The event is first come, first serve and space is limited.

Guests sample a variety of coffees and learn things like deciphering the differences between coffees.

“Appreciating the seed-to-cup process and how coffees are grown, all the expertise that happens at origin to create great coffees,” he said.

The coffee shop’s opening date has not been set.

Once the coffee shop is open, the McDaniels intend to host more public cuppings as the additional 2,000 square feet of space will allow for a larger capacity.

More coffee in Asheville

In 2019, when Cooperative was founded, the entrepreneurs said they saw an opening for more roasters focused on small batches, sustainability and high-quality coffee production that were based in Asheville.

“Some of the good coffee shops were ordering coffee from roasters far away from Asheville in order to get the sweet, bright and clean flavor profile that they wanted. The good, well-sourced coffees that are relationship focused, ethically sourced, people were looking outside of Asheville for that,” Matthew McDaniel said.

The coffee scene continues to bubble up around Asheville with more local roasters and cafés introduced and growing.

Yet, the McDaniels said there is still room for more.

“At the surface level it seems like it might be a competitive situation but it’s not really because specialty coffee is a growing market,” Matthew McDaniel said. “More and more people are drinking good coffee instead of just gas station coffee.”

Matthew McDaniel said Asheville’s coffee industry continues to grow like the beer industry, and many more roasters have entered the arena since Cooperative debuted.

Katie McDaniel said Cooperative was founded as a wholesale distributor with the idea of supporting the people who run the cafés and serving it to the customers. She compared roasting coffee and opening a café to a brewery producing beer and opening a taproom. She said it makes sense and that she’s seen more roasters do the same.

“I think it is similar to the beer observation, ‘I don’t know if Asheville needs another roaster,’ then another one does come along,” Matthew McDaniel said. “But if what they’re doing is unique and they’re contributing, then it’s all good. The coffee community is small, and it’s connected and everybody’s looking out for each other and wanting to support each other.”

Cooperative Coffee Roasters

Where: 210 Haywood Road, Asheville.

Hours: 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Thursday for wholesale and retail sale pickups.

Info: For more, visit cooperativecoffeeroasters.com and facebook.com/CooperativeCoffeeRoasters and follow on Instagram at @cooperativecoffeeroasters.

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Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Instagram @PrincessOfPage. Please support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Cooperative Coffee Roasters plan for first coffee shop in Asheville