I don’t know how you’ve been this year, but it’s safe to say the little coffee children in Austin and Berlin have been exceptionally good, because Santa Claus/Weihnachtsmann is bringing some new cafes down the chimney for them this year. Berlin stalwart The Barn is opening their fifth location while Chicago’s Intelligentsia is making a push into Austin with their first cafe in the south.
It’s a pretty hot day for big brands in the international coffee scene making cafe announcements. The first comes courtesy of The Barn, whose newest location sits in “the exact spot where East and West Berlin intersect.” Situated in the Weinhaus Huth, the new location for The Barn is an over 100-year-old “post-war symbol for the destruction and division of the city,” per the press release.
For decades, The Huth restaurant was the meeting place for society and wine-lovers alike on Berlin’s ‘Times Square’ of the 1920s. The building was the only one surviving the war at Potsdamer Platz.
And it will once again be a meeting place when The Barn opens its new space, bringing in design elements like a raw flame-finished granite bar, rough-plastered walls, untreated floors, and Eames chairs. The first official day for The Barn’s newest café is slated for Saturday, December 22nd, just in time for Jolly Ole Saint Nick.
Not to be outdone, Chicago’s Intelligentsia Coffee announced they will be making a push into Austin, adding to their outpost cities alongside Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. According to Austin360, the brand isn’t entirely new to the city, already having a fully functioning training lab connected to East Austin’s Revival Cycles. The cafe will be just south of downtown in the lobby of the soon-to-be-open Third + Shoal building.
But unlike its Berliner counterpart, this little gift won’t be ready in enough time to make it under the tree, with an expected open in late spring of 2019. It’s more like those coupons you used to give as gifts to your parents when you were a kid, the ones that can be redeemed at some future date. But instead of it saying “Good for one vacuuming of the house without complaining,” it’s “Good for one major US coffee brand making a move into one of the hottest coffee cities in the south.”
Good tidings of comfort and joe.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
Disclosure: Intelligentsia is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network.
