The Michigan brand with a capital ‘B’ is planting more of its coffee beans in Oakland and Wayne counties.
Inkster city council members recently reviewed a special land use petition for a Biggby Coffee drive-thru proposed for 27206 Michigan Ave.
Meanwhile, the coffeehouse chain inked a lease agreement this week, securing little over 2,100 square feet of retail space in the Village at Big Beaver strip plaza at 1852 E. Big Beaver Road in Troy.
“What we’re trying to do now is set the bar for others because I have a passion for Inkster,” said Majed Mehdi, a franchisee working to bring a Biggby to his hometown. “I grew up in Inkster, I’ve been here for more than 30 years. So we’re trying to set the bar for others to jump in and do more the city so we can match Westland, Garden City, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights.”
Biggby Coffee is a national coffee chain with local roots that boasts more than 350 cafes across several states. According to its website, there are currently about 240 Biggby Coffee locations sprawled across Michigan. Twenty-seven more are slated to launch soon in the state, including stores in Farmington Hills, Northville, Roseville and Allen Park.
In 1995, Bob Fish and Mary Roszel founded the first restaurant in East Lansing under the chain’s original name, Beaner’s Coffee. The company began expanding about a year later and in 2008, the regional franchise decided to rebrand, citing the disparaging connotation of the term “beaner,” a slur commonly used against Hispanic Americans. The franchise derived its new name from the letter B that anchored its logo.
Biggby announced in April that it’s become the official coffee brand of the Detroit Tigers, a partnership that will see the Big B logo burnished throughout Comerica Park.
Known for its “less pretentious and fun approach to the standard gourmet café paradigm,” Biggby Coffee offers traditional cups of Joe along with iced coffees, tea lattes, hot chocolates and a whole lineup of specialized lattes hand crafted by trained baristas. The restaurants’ food menu includes ciabattas, muffins breakfast bagels, donut holes and macarons.
Troy already has a Biggby Coffee house at 1057 E. Long Lake Road. Records indicate the company signed a one-year lease Thursday for the new location along the Big Beaver corridor about three miles south.
A Leo’s Coney Island family restaurant and Tim Hortons fast-casual coffee shop currently exist at the shopping plaza. Biggby Coffee is slated to open in 2024, according to CMP Real Estate Group, the West Bloomfield commercial property firm that helped broker the lease acquisition.
The Biggby Coffee in Inkster is poised to become the western suburb’s first outpost. It will move into a vacant standalone building formerly occupied by the shuttered Overtime Sports Tavern in the town center district.
Mehdi, the franchisee, has already demolished the structure down to three walls and is preparing to rebuild it virtually from the ground up.
City officials approved a zoning variance for the drive-thru during a June 20 council meeting. They’d already approved the restaurant’s site plan.
Mehdi estimated the Inkster location along Michigan Avenue will open this fall. Biggy company officials have surveyed the site and seemed confident it meets their standards. Mehdi said he’s awaiting a final sign off from the chain.
“I don’t feel like I’m risking anything,” he told What Now Detroit. “It’s Michigan Avenue, it’s a city full of people. So I’m confident we will do business, 100 percent.”
Through their development firm AAHM Investments, Mehdi and his wife Jennifer are helping to steer a rebirth of Inkster’s downtown. Earlier this year, the couple turned the condemned Rode-Way Motel, once a den of drugs and prostitution, into an affordable-living apartment complex at 25911 Michigan Ave.
They’ve also transformed the old Inkster Civic Arena next door to the Biggby coffeehouse into a revamped soccer and personal training facility. Majed Mehdi said several businesses have recently reached out with interest in investing in the area.
“Everybody else has, has, has, has and we don’t, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t,” he said. “That’s the goal, to get to a point where the city of Inkster has that vibrant downtown because the people here deserve to have it.”
