Tag: Atlas Coffee

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Coronavirus News

Cut the check: BRACE grants bring relief for some businesses

Atlas Coffee's Lorie Craddock was disappointed when she did not receive a BRACE grant, which would have helped pay fixed expenses at the temporarily shuttered shop. PC: John Robinson

As the coronavirus epidemic has devastated small businesses nationwide, many local shops and restaurants have sought federal relief. But the City of Charlottesville has also rolled out several of its own assistance initiatives this month. The Building Resilience Among Charlottesville Entrepreneurs grant, which awarded up to $2,000 to city businesses, received nearly 150 applications in three days.

The program is intended to help companies cover costs associated with changing their business models to adapt to social distancing requirements, says Jason Ness, business development manager for the city’s Office of Economic Development. But it could also be used to cover fixed costs like utilities and rent.

With $85,000 allocated for the program, “we spread it out as much as we could,” says Ness. After reviewing applications and conducting virtual interviews, OED staff decided on 69 awardees, who received an average of $1,200 each.

Ness says the city gave priority to people who were going to use the funds locally. For instance, “if a business needed to do deep cleaning and was going to hire another [area] business to do that work, that scored higher.”

“The more information and explanation the business owners gave us, the easier it was for us to decide,” he adds.

OMG! Cleaning Team owner Stephanie Ragland, who received a BRACE grant, demonstrates cleaning at a routine location in her protective gear. PC: Zack Wajsgras

Belmont restaurant The Local was among the awardees. Since March 18, the eatery has offered 10 meal options for a flat $10 fee, with 100 percent of the sales going to support its furloughed employees. It’s also provided free meals daily to its staff, and free and reduced-price meals to community members in need.

“The money from the grant is helping with food costs,” says Director of Operations Michelle Moshier. “We are [also] actively working on federal loans and grants that are available, as well as anything available through the city. …We’re hopeful that that support will help us to keep going with delivery and takeout until the restaurant can reopen.”

After losing more than two-thirds of her clients, Stephanie Ragland, owner of the cleaning service OMG! Cleaning Team, was also able to secure a $1,500 BRACE grant, which she plans to use to pay for a new professional vacuum (her old one broke), and compensate her employees. The funds also helped her pay off the rest of the fees associated with her company’s new website.

Ty Cooper filming his ongoing project, “Your Covid Story,” in his protective gear. PC: Subject

The local arts community wasn’t left out: With the $1,000 BRACE grant he received, filmmaker Ty Cooper, founder of Lifeview Marketing & Visuals, purchased a high-quality professional light that will allow him to film outside, which he was unable to do with his older equipment. He plans to use the light for his ongoing project, “Your Covid Story,” showcasing how the pandemic has impacted the lives of area residents.

Still, with the limited amount of funds allocated for BRACE grants, more than half of the applicants did not receive any money—a significant portion of them local restaurants.

“We have a text thread with about two dozen restaurant owners and managers to communicate every day,” says Maya co-owner Peter Castiglione. “There was a handful from our group…who did receive their $2,000 from the BRACE grant, but most of us got an ‘unfortunately’ email, which is what I received.”

Castiglione would have used the grant to help pay for some of Maya’s ongoing expenses. While the restaurant is currently offering curbside pickup meals, the entire staff has been laid off, he says.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed that we didn’t make the cut [for the BRACE grant]. That $2,000 would have gone a long way towards helping our staff,” he adds. However, “I was very excited to know that some of the restaurants in our group did receive it.”

Atlas Coffee also did not receive a BRACE grant. The shop’s owners planned to use the grant for fixed expenses because Atlas is not currently offering delivery or takeout options.

“For a couple months, we’re fine…but [say] we open back up in May, June, July, whatever. If you look at the Spanish flu and that experience, it’s the second wave that really affected people,” says Atlas co-owner Lorie Craddock. “If we have to do it again in November and shut for another six [months], we’re really going to be in the weeds at that point.”

Applications for other city business assistance programs—the Business Equity Fund Resiliency Loan and the Growing Opportunities Hire Grant—have already closed, but the city and county have provided funding for the Community Investment Collaborative’s Business Recovery Fund microloan program, which is currently accepting applications.

According to Ness, the city plans to look for more ways to provide aid to local businesses.

“We’re still interested and have resources available to help with more assistance in the future,” he says. “It’s just a matter of trying to see how things are going to play out in the next couple months, with hopefully [things returning] back to normal as soon as possible.”

Categories
Living

Small eateries are full of flavor

With just one three-seat table and 10 chairs at the bar, Atlas Coffee can accommodate more caffeine addicts when the weather’s nice—there are 31 additional spots on the patio out front. Photo by John Robinson

Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it before: For a city its size, Charlottesville has a lot of restaurants. Like, a lot. In 2013, the Huffington Post ranked our city among the top 15 U.S. metro areas with the most eateries per capita, with 460 restaurants for 201,400 residents.

With so many chow options at our fingertips, it’s easy to overlook some of the smaller ones.

Here’s a roundup of some of the tiniest places to nosh in town—the limited number of seats at each spot makes eating (or caffeinating) there a little more special, like you’re privy to some great secret. We’ll keep this list just between us.

Atlas Coffee

2206 B Fontaine Ave., Fry’s Spring

Pop into Atlas Coffee for a cup of joe and a freshly baked Nutella cookie or raspberry triangle and you’ll be lucky to find a seat in this 751-square-foot neighborhood coffee shop tucked beneath the wing of the Fry’s Spring Guadalajara. With just one three-seat table and 10 chairs at the bar, Atlas can accommodate more caffeine addicts when the weather’s nice—there are 31 additional spots at the umbrella-covered tables on the patio out front.

The Spot

110 Second St. NW, downtown

At less than 50 square feet, The Spot is literally a hole in the wall. Actually, it’s a door and window in the wall, but you get the idea. Sidle up to the window to order vegetarian and vegan cuisine from Vu Noodles and Greenie’s. Unless you’re lucky enough to snag one of two seats at the window’s tiny counter, you’ll have to eat your delicious noms elsewhere. It’s a tight squeeze for The Spot workers, too—with only 35 square feet of walkable space, “we’re pretty cozy in here,” says Vu Noodles’ Julie Vu.

Blue Ridge Country Store

518 E. Main St., Downtown Mall

Stop by the Blue Ridge Country Store for a sandwich, or put together a monster salad for your lunch. Expect to take your food to go, but there are two pause-worthy rocking chairs in this oh-so-cozy shop.

The Flat

111 E. Water St. #A, downtown

Technically, The Flat is, as its full name suggests, a takeaway crêperie, but the itty-bitty two-story brick building covered in ivy is so darn cute customers hang around in hopes of eating their sweet and savory crêpes under the twinkly lights hanging above the small outdoor patio. There’s one table, one small counter with a couple of wire chairs and a little bench. The Flat is light on the hours but heavy on the charm, so when the two little windows in front are glowing, you know there’s something tasty happening inside.

Barbie's Burrito Barn. Photo by Amy Jackson

Barbie’s Burrito Barn

201 Avon St., Belmont

A woman named Barbie Brannock serves simple and super fresh CaliMex cuisine from this 721-square-foot rock barn near the Belmont Bridge. Barbie’s Burrito Barn has but two small square tables and eight chairs inside, plus a picnic table and four brightly colored plastic Adirondack-style chairs outside. Brannock is planning to add a community table inside, too, so that more burrito-lovers can chow down together on colder days.

The White Spot

1407 University Ave., The Corner

This late-night Corner haunt serves up its famous Gus burgers in what is more or less a wide hallway with two counters and just 16 stools.

This isn’t a definitive list, by any means—Mel’s Café, La Michoacana, Wayside Deli at Durty Nelly’s, Thai Fresh and Keevil & Keevil Grocery and Kitchen are pretty cozy places, too.

Categories
Living

Cold-brew coffee isn’t a watered down version of the original

Snowing in Space Coffee Co. co-owner Paul Dierkes, left, says adding nitrogen results in smooth, thick and creamy coffee, similar to a Guinness.

It’s been really hot. We’re all sweaty and sluggish, and most of us could use a good jolt to get through the dog days of summer.

Enter iced coffee, which, on a steamy day, can taste like the ambrosia of the gods…as long as it’s done right.

Brew a regular cup of coffee, let it cool and drop in a few ice cubes and you’ll be left with a bland, weak, watered-down brew. It might cool you down, but it won’t taste very good. There’s an art to brewing a flavorful glass of iced coffee, and coffee shops and markets all over town are mastering it with different techniques.

None of them are necessarily better than others, it’s just “a matter of preference,” says Milli Coffee Roasters owner Nick Leichtentritt.

Here are some of the methods local coffee shops are using right now.

Cold brew

A few years ago, almost nobody was cold-brewing coffee, says Shark Mountain owner and head coffee roaster Jonny Nuckols. Now, it’s all the rage, probably because the cold-brew method yields a smooth, flavorful, non-acidic beverage ideal for adding some cream and sipping slowly, he says.

Cold-brew coffee is a distinct way of brewing. As its name implies, it never touches heat. To create a batch of Shark Mountain cold brew, Nuckols finely grinds a light-roast coffee and adds the grounds to a filter bag within a nylon bag inside a five-gallon bucket. He pours about three gallons of cool water onto the grounds and lets the mixture soak for 20 to 24 hours. Then, he pours the filtered, concentrated brew into a five-gallon keg and adds water to bring the brew to a normal, but still fairly strong, strength. It’s dispensed from the keg and poured over ice as customers order.

This method extracts good flavors from the bean while leaving out the bitterness found in hot coffees, says Nuckols. Depending on the bean used, you’ll taste more chocolate, nut and berry flavors than you might with a hot cup of coffee, but you won’t get as robust a flavor profile, because high temperature is what ultimately draws out all of those notes. But still, “cold brew is definitely a good thing for the coffee industry,” he says. You can try Shark Mountain cold brew at Studio IX or at the iLab at Darden.

Shenandoah Joe’s Brain Freeze is also a cold-brew iced coffee. Owner Dave Fafara says his shops use a blend of coffees created specifically for iced coffee. Their 16-hour, triple-strained cold brew is popular: Fafara estimates that, during the summer, Shenandoah Joe moves between 100 and 125 gallons in Charlottesville each week. And JM Stock Provisions also sells cold brew—you can take home a growler of it—which they brew in-house.

Japanese style

Over at Milli Coffee Roasters on the corner of Preston Avenue and McIntire Road, Leichtentritt uses the Japanese-style iced coffee method. The resulting brew is “a little more well-balanced,” he says. “One of the big selling points of cold-brew coffee is that people say it’s very low-acid.” But, to him, “that little bit of acid is what helps make a good, balanced cup of coffee.”

Like cold brew, the Japanese-style method begins with finely ground coffee and a filter, but this method uses hot water. “It’s essentially like brewing really strong coffee” that is immediately poured—and thus cooled and diluted—over ice, Leichtentritt says. The cooled coffee is then stored in a carafe and poured over ice once again upon serving.

Cooling the coffee right away is the key. High temperatures bring out a coffee’s flavor, but the longer a brew is exposed to air as it cools, the more those flavor-packed compounds break down. Cooling the coffee quickly, with ice, helps trap and preserve those compounds.

Other shops around town, including Atlas Coffee and Mudhouse, make their iced coffee using a similar process. It’s the easiest way to make a lot of iced coffee quickly, says one Mudhouse barista.

Nitro

Nitro coffee, one of the latest coffee trends, is more like a craft beer than a brewed coffee, says Snowing in Space Coffee Co. co-owner Paul Dierkes. Nitro isn’t served on ice, but it is cold brewed and served cold from a keg. It tastes great black, but if cream and sugar is your thing, pour ’em in.

To brew nitro, Snowing in Space cold brews coffee on a large scale, kegs it, then pumps nitrogen gas into the keg at a high pressure for a long time to essentially agitate the brew. It’s served directly from the keg’s tap. Dierkes likens the resulting brew to a Guinness (a nitrogenated beer); it’s smooth, thick and creamy, with a foamy head.

Snowing in Space sources its beans from Shenandoah Joe and offers three single-origin brews, including the straightforward, nutty Brazilian Gimme-Dat and the unusual blueberry Lil Blue, and plans on introducing more varieties, including a cocoa mole flavor, soon. “The goal is experimentation,” Dierkes says while admitting he’s not a coffee connoisseur. “Let’s get experimental with styles and flavors and get interesting coffees to people.”

You can try Snowing in Space’s nitro coffee at Paradox Pastry, Keevil & Keevil Grocery and Champion Brewery. But it isn’t the only nitro in town—Shenandoah Joe and Mudhouse offer it as well.