Several decades ago, Robby Grubbs met his now-wife Neesha at a club in Deep Ellum. On Tuesday, they'll open their first Dallas coffee shop a few blocks away.
Merit Coffee Co. is a shop and roastery that started in San Antonio and has grown to Austin and now Dallas. Robby appreciates the role reversal: "Being from San Antonio, we're used to things starting in Dallas and Austin," he says. "We're so grateful to have the opportunity to showcase what we do here."
Merit — which is changing its name from Local Coffee, as it's known in San Antonio — is a "farm to cup" operation, Robby says. The company's green coffee buyer Jamie Isetts travels to countries like Honduras, Colombia, Ethiopia and Kenya to source single-origin coffee.
The shop sells cortados, lattes, cold brew, batch coffee and the like, plus pastries from Dallas shop Bisous Bisous Patisserie, tacos from Austin-born Tacodeli and loose-leaf tea from Chicago company Spirit Tea. A coffee lab inside the Deep Ellum shop will allow employees to taste coffee on-site in a technique called coffee cupping.
Merit in Deep Ellum is located on a section of Main Street with a spacious patio, in place of the former Lula B's that's been dissected into small shops designed to bring foot traffic to the neighborhood at all hours, not just nighttime.
The Highland Park store, opening April 2, is sandwiched in the middle of the Shops of Highland Park, in a former hair salon.
Both shops are coffee and tea only — no beer, no wine, despite a current trend for coffee shops to stay open late and serve alcohol.
The Merits in Dallas are designed with zig-zag banquettes that allow customers to sit on one long bench that somehow doesn't feel like communal seating.
"At every coffee shop, there are a lot of bad seats," Robby says. "I don't want a bad seat in the house."
Merit Coffee opens March 26 at 2639 Main St. in Deep Ellum and on April 2 at 4228 Oak Lawn Ave. in Highland Park. On April 4, Robby Grubbs celebrates his 50th birthday.
