Wake up, Indian River County.
Get the day started with hot coffee, cold brews and iced lattes at these six coffeehouses and coffee shops — four in Vero Beach and two in Sebastian.
Check back for future stories about Martin and St. Lucie counties as TCPalm conquers where to get coffee on the Treasure Coast.
Some profits help educate over 1,700 Miskito children along the Rio Coco in Nicaragua each year. Owner Michael Bagby was on a team that traveled from Maui, Hawaii, to war-torn Honduras in 1984 to start a school for refugee children and expanded “Project Ezra” to 12 villages. His wife, Laura Uyeda, later joined. When the war ended in 1990, the refugees returned to Nicaragua, where the team opened eights schools along the river. After the couple met coffee farmers in 2004, they started a coffee business to help pay teachers. They exported beans to North Carolina in 2005 before buying a roaster in 2008 and opening Rio Coco Cafe in 2011 on Utila, an island north of Honduras. They opened a Vero Beach cafe and roastery at the airport in 2012, slow-roasting hand-picked, high-altitude specialty coffee in small batches. Their children, Mikaela, Lukas, Arielle and Moselle, helped open a third location in the Pocahontas Building in 2018.
Chef Michael Glatz dreamed of retiring from the fine dining industry and opening a small coffee shop, which he did in 2020. When he lost his investor amid COVID, the community rallied to provide funding for the shop at 14th Avenue and 20th Street. “The coffee was very important to me,” said Glatz, who uses Miami roaster Great Circle Coffee. “Coffee has always been a passion,” stirring memories of having it with his mother. His most popular items are cold brews, cappuccinos and the “Breakfast Cubano” — coffee-roasted pork, ham, egg souffle, cheddar, banana peppers and spicy mayo.
Joe Nutt lived in Germany and Russia and studied at Carpigiani’s Gelato University in Bologna, Italy, before he quit his advertising job, moved to Florida for family and opened a gelato shop near Ocean Drive in July 2019 with his wife, Anastasia Emelyanova. He added coffee to make it financially feasible. He’s keeping his supplier a secret, but his brewed coffee is Brazilian and his espresso is a Honduran-Guatemalan blend.
It’s a coffee shop by day and a live-music bar by night, opened in 2015 by brother-sister team Ryan and Ashlee Wykoff, both Vero Beach natives and Saint Edward’s School graduates. They serve brewed and French-pressed coffees, espresso, lattes and cappuccinos from St. Petersburg roaster Kawha Coffee, as well as breakfast and lunch. Their building, near their parents’ Frosting bakery, was owned by grandmother Barbara Thompson for over 40 years.
Vero Beach native Lisa Myers shouts “love you” to regular customers as they leave the coffeehouse she opened in 2019 in the historic Simeon Park House built in 1913. “I needed to figure out how to have coffee with my dad every day and get paid for it,” said Myers, a retired urology nurse. Amid COVID, she turned a side room into a walk-up, drive-thru window. The fresh roasts come from Santino Supremo Coffee in Palm Bay and cold brews from Vegan Farmacy in Fort Pierce. Iced coffees have coffee ice cubes.
Leslie and David Wayment are the fourth owners of this used bookstore with a coffee bar and Indian River Lagoon view. “It’s the only place in Sebastian where you can meet friends and sit and talk, but it was going to close,” Leslie said. “My husband and I bought it [in 2017] knowing nothing about the business. We just felt Sebastian needed it.” The “brew of the day” came about amid COVID because it was wasteful brewing four kinds of coffee every day. Leftover coffee is frozen for iced lattes and cold brews. Five roasters supply her coffee. The Sumatra is a blend from two roasters. She serves her favorite, Oceana Coffee in Tequesta, on Mondays and Fridays. She said she uses sealed pods for espresso, made in an Italian machine, because they’re fresher than beans.
Laurie K. Blandford is TCPalm’s entertainment reporter and columnist dedicated to finding the best things to do on the Treasure Coast. Follow her on Twitter @TCPalmLaurie and Facebook @TCPalmLaurie. Email her at laurie.blandford@tcpalm.com. Sign up for her What To Do in 772 weekly newsletter at profile.tcpalm.com/newsletters/manage.
6 coffee shops, coffeehouses creating a buzz in Vero Beach, Sebastian – TCPalm
