New Orleans-based French Truck Coffee hopes to open its first Baton Rouge location at 2978 Government St. in the old Southern Camera Service building in mid-July.
The building—near Baton Rouge Magnet High School and a Chase Bank branch—has been undergoing renovations for some time now.
Matthew Shirley, who also is a broker for Saurage Rotenberg Commercial Real Estate, purchased the building last year with an anonymous business partner, and the duo is leasing the building to French Coffee Truck.
Shirley says improvements have been made to the building’s side exterior, a parking lot has been added, and a cut off has been made in a wall to add natural lighting. The renovations are on schedule to be complete by July 15, he says.
Once the coffee shop and microroaster opens, its owner Geoffrey Meeker intends to stagger the introduction of services to his clientele.
Meeker, who opened the first French Truck Coffee in New Orleans in 2012, says the coffee shop will be available first and cafe service will follow. Meeker will make available the microroaster and roasted coffee products last.
The Baton Rouge location will have a modern design, Meeker says, and customers will be able to observe the coffee roasting process from inside the shop.
French Truck Coffee buys its coffee beans from Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Costa Rica, Ethiopia and Indonesia, among other nations. Meeker says the high-end specialty coffees—sans sprinkles and whipped cream—typically appeal to more adventurous foodies.
“We are trying to find the very best coffee we can coming from people who really care about how they produce it,” he says, adding that process is similar to wine production. French Truck Coffee now has three locations on Magazine, Chartres, and Dryades streets in New Orleans. Meeker is opening a roaster cafe in Memphis similar to the one he’s developing in Baton Rouge.
After experiencing so much success in New Orleans, Meeker says the Capital City felt like the logical next step.
“The development that I saw going up on Government Street, the traffic pattern changes that I saw—where there would be bike lanes—and the central location of it all came together,” he says. “I saw it would be a good spot for us to locate our Baton Rouge business.”
—Alexandria Burris
