While manufacturing jobs are on the rise in Detroit, a new "plant" opening this fall will be more about coffee than cars.
The Roasting Plant, a coffee roaster and shop with two locations in New York City, announced Wednesday it plans to open a third location in downtown Detroit at the First National Building, across from Campus Martius.
It's a double homecoming for Roasting Plant's Elizabeth Rose, who was raised in Detroit and played in the halls of First National as a kid when her father brought her to work with him.
"We jumped at the chance to open our first non-New York shop in the heart of resurging downtown Detroit," Rose said in a statement.
The Roasting Plant will offer 11 bean choices daily and use its Javabot system to individually create each customer's drink.
While coffee by-the-cup and in-house roasting might seem like novelties, Corktown's Astro Coffee, which opened last summer, also brews individual cups, and it's not the only new coffee shop to open in Detroit recently. It's been a big year for the addictive beverage -- Germack Coffee Roasting Co. (the very same as the pistachio company) opened this March in Eastern Market, also brewing on-site. Anthology Coffee, which makes and roasts its own blends, hosts a pop-up shop in MOCAD and has secured a storefront in Corktown, set to open before the end of the year.
But according to the Detroit Free Press, the Roasting Plant promises the "freshest cup of coffee in the world." If you can't wait until fall to take that bait, you can apparently subscribe to the company's coffee through its website.
The Roasting Plant's cafe is the newest in a slew of business and retail openings in Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert's thick portfolio of downtown properties. Through his real estate company Rock Ventures, he purchased the historic First National Building for $8.1 million in August, according to Crain's Detroit Business.
With cupcakes and a Chrysler office at the nearby Dime Building (now renamed Chrysler House), Twitter starting a small operation in the Madison Building and several other companies opening offices, Gilbert seems to be working overtime to fill his Woodward Avenue spaces with people and shops. Or, with some 2 million square feet of property to his name, he's at least scrambling to collect some rent money.