Barista Competitor Matt Ludwikowski Plans to Open Retail Bar for His Brash Coffee

Warehouse Row in downtown Chattanooga

Matt Ludwikowski, the 2012 Southeast Regional USBC Brewer’s Cup champion and former Octane Coffee (Atlanta) barista, plans to early next year open a retail bar for his importing, roasting and retail operation, Brash Coffee.

The Chattanoogan reports that the formerly touring musician and longtime barista has settled on a space inside Chattanooga’s Warehouse Row, an upscale mixed-used retail and office loft project in a former Civil War stone fort. Ludwikowski maintains direct ties to farms in El Salvador, last year becoming the first ever Brewer’s Cup winner to use beans he’d picked.

(more: Nashville’s Barista Parlor Partnering with Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach for New Roastery)

Ludwikowski has been operating in a Bucktown, Atlanta roastery and lab, offering tastings by appointment and maintaining some wholesale accounts. The Chattanoogan suggests that the new retail bar, designed by Atlanta-based restaurant specialist Smith Hanes, will represent quite a big jump for Brash, employing some 10 baristas in a “raw, utilitarian, Southern workspace that pays homage to Warehouse Row’s history and represents Brash Coffee’s values of simplicity and sustainability.”

For more: The Chattanoogan