Cafe that was never supposed to be a cafe celebrates 10 years of success, lessons learned

When Andrew Gough was preparing to open his Reverie Coffee Roasters a decade ago, he intended for the business to serve many purposes — the most important of which would be roasting single-origin artisan coffee beans and selling them to retail and wholesale customers.

A cafe, though, was not part of the plan.

As the 10-year anniversary of Reverie’s opening day approaches, Gough said he’s learned that plans usually change. Today, he and his wife, Katie, own a much different business than they thought they were opening on Monday, June 10, 2013.

Not only does today’s Reverie function as one of Wichita’s best-known cafes, but it now serves customers artisan pastries and espresso drinks from express locations in both northeast Wichita and Newton.

The cozy, modern cafe — which on any given morning is filled with people working on their laptops or having coffee meetups with friends — has even grown over the last decade into the most profitable part of the Goughs’ business, even though the wholesale operation is also a success. This year, Reverie will roast a record 100,000 pounds of coffee beans, which it will use to service its nearly 200 wholesale clients. Among them: local restaurants like HomeGrown, student and faculty coffee shops at Wichita State University, a regional chain of convenience stores, and even three cafes in Alabama.

On Saturday, Reverie will celebrate its 10th birthday with a day full of coffee and food specials and an evening Latte Art Throwdown, which will draw baristas from across the region. Customers will be able to watch as the competitors make intricate designs in latte foam to try to impress a panel of judges.

In the meantime, Gough is looking back at his first 10 years of business, during which he experimented with lots of new ideas, some of which worked and some of which didn’t.

And he anticipates more of the same in the decade to come, he said.

“I would expect that over the next 10 years, we’ll continue to evolve into whatever it is that the community wants,” he said.

Risks taken, lessons learned

Gough was working as a retirement education coordinator at Intrust Bank when he began to develop an interest in coffee. He came across a good deal on a commercial roaster, and along with a partner, he and Katie, decided to get into the coffee roasting business.

They started with a small spot at 2611 E. Douglas, where they installed the roaster and set up a retail area, planning to supply beans to restaurants and retail customers and also to offer coffee education classes in the space.

They initially added a couple of tables where visiting customers could sit to sample the coffee before they bought a bag. But at first, Reverie didn’t even have a standard coffee maker. Instead, employees would serve customers cold brews and “pour overs.”

After only a few months, though, Gough began to realize that his customers really wanted to stay. They wanted a cafe.

He started opening Reverie earlier, and by the time the shop celebrated its first birthday, it was also operating as a cafe. Gough added Wi-Fi and a menu of espresso drinks, and he built long wooden tables where his customers could linger over a cup. He started offering prepared sandwiches and served locally made pastries. After the first year, the Goughs also parted ways with their business partner.

Reverie continued to grow, and it eventually ran out of room. In early 2018, Gough made a big move, taking over and remodeling a new space just four blocks to the west of the original, When Reverie opened in the new space, it had its own bakery, its own chef, and it started serving breakfast and lunch as well as adult beverages.

Gough was set on a path of growth, and from 2018 on, he opened a couple of other Reverie locations. But neither worked out.

He added a small Reverie cafe on the lower level of the Garvey Center, opening it not long before he opened the expanded Reverie on Douglas. But he closed the Garvey space a year later, saying that it hadn’t produced the sales he’d expected. In the summer of 2018, Wichita’s new Advanced Learning Library opened at Second and McLean, and it included a unique feature: a miniature Reverie Cafe just inside the entrance, designed to help entice patrons to the new library. But the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 closed the library, and when it reopened, the crowds were no longer there for the cafe. Gough decided to close it.

Gough also altered his services several times during the first few years. Though he started the expanded Reverie with food service, by fall of 2018, he decided that a full-service restaurant wasn’t the right fit for the shop and scaled back to quick grab-and-go items. Ever since fully reopening from the pandemic in March of 2021, Reverie has served only house-made baked goods with its coffee.

The changes, Gough said, have all been about learning what works and what doesn’t. They’ve also been about listening to what his customers want.

“There have been a lot of hard lessons with the opening and closing of locations,” he said. “But that’s kind of what we signed up for. When you’re charting into a somewhat risky business, there are unknowns. We’re just really fortunate because people have always been there for us.”

Still room to grow

Today, Gough’s business operates much differently from what he envisioned in 2013 — and even from what he envisioned when he expanded in 2018.

The cafe on Douglas is always busy, a destination for coffee fans both downtown and in the nearby College Hill neighborhood. But the only food it serves besides a breakfast burrito and a rotating quiche are its artisan pastries: European-style 52-layer croissants, brioche buns, cookies and quick breads that have gained a following and are made by bakery manager Weston Townsley. Reverie also no longer serves adult beverages: Gough cut that in February of 2022.

In the past year and a half, Gough also has opened two more satellite versions of Reverie — and closed one. Reverie took over the old Mojos Coffee Bar space in North Newton in January 2022, but that one closed in May after Gough said he realized his business wasn’t what the community wanted.

Two drive-through only businesses, both called Reverie Roasters Express, are thriving, he said. One he opened in February 2022 at 220 E. 12th St. in Newton. The other opened in April at 7817 E. 37th St. North in Wichita

Gough is now looking toward the next decade of Reverie, and he said he suspects that the business will continue to evolve in an effort to give customers what they say they want. He’s open to more expansion, if the opportunity makes sense, he said. And he’s glad he now has 10 years of experience to help guide future decisions.

“We’ve been having a lot of fun serving as a business that fulfills a very much desired need in our community, which is for people to have a place where they feel safe, where they feel respected, where they find friendship, where they find ways of doing business and where they see the better side of our community through the lens of a coffee shop,” he said.

Reverie Coffee Roasters celebrates 10 years

When: All day Saturday

Where: 2202 E. Douglas

What: The shop will offer drink specials throughout the day, and the bakery will serve a special item called a “Croissant-O Pup,” featuring butter croissant dough wrapped around an all-beef hot dog and served with brown mustard. Spectators are welcome to watch a “Latte Art Throwdown,” which will last from 6:30 to 9 p.m. and will award one barista a $500 prize.

Reverie hours: 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays; 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays