Elemental Coffee Roasters

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development
|category1=Midtown
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|project=Elemental Coffee
|address=815 N. Hudson
|status=complete
|owner=Elemental Coffee Roasters
|cost=
|architect=Hans Butzer, bgDesign
|start=
|finish=2011 renovations
|contractor=
|height=
|sq. feet=3,000 sf
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Elemental Coffee Roasters to add bar at its new facility
By Brianna Bailey
Journal Record
Oklahoma City reporter - Contact 405-278-2847
Posted: 07:10 PM Thursday, January 6, 2011

OKLAHOMA CITY – Elemental Coffee Roasters hopes to recruit a loyal crowd of coffee geeks to the new coffee bar it is fashioning out of a former garage in Midtown.

Starting Jan. 18, the company plans to roll up the garage door from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. at its new home at 815 N. Hudson Ave. to serve gourmet coffee to the morning downtown crowd Monday through Saturday.

The company hopes to complete renovations at the 3,000-square-foot facility and open the finished coffee bar by April 1.

“We want to make it a place where if you just want a cup of coffee and no “blah, blah, blah,” that’s fine, but if you want to come sit and hang out and geek it up with us about coffee, then we’re your place, too,” Elemental co-owner Chris Holliday said.

Elemental chose its new site, once the home of an auto repair business, because of its close proximity to the booming downtown and Midtown areas.

“We kind of see it as a part of the city rising up, and the coffee culture here rising up with it,” said Laura Massenat, Elemental co-founder.

Acclaimed Architect Hans Butzer’s firm bgDesign is helping out with the design of the new coffee bar, which will feature an urban, modern ambiance with communal seating.

Local coffee enthusiasts Holliday, Stephen Michalik and husband and wife Laurent and Laura Massenat founded Elemental in 2008 after lamenting the lack of gourmet coffee available at local restaurants.

Holliday and Michalik both have careers in information technology in Oklahoma City; Laurent Massenat is principal of Obelisk Engineering Inc. Laura Massenat also works at Obelisk and runs the nonprofit Eat Wise Oklahoma City, which promotes healthy eating habits among local schoolchildren.

The company is currently housed in a brick warehouse in an industrial area at 1825 W. Main St.

The back room of the warehouse is filled with burlap sacks and boxes of green coffee beans shipped from exotic locales like Guatemala and Kenya. Various scientific-looking measuring devices and Bunsen burners are strewn across a long table where Elemental’s owners taste-test or “cup” all of the different coffees that pass through the warehouse.

The partners buy one coffee out of every 90 it tries in its taste-testing laboratory.

The company roasts coffee twice a week and delivers it to metro area cafes and specialty grocers.

Holliday and the Massenats eventually hope to buy a coffee farm in Guatemala together, but have settled for running Elemental until the U.S. dollar strengthens against the Guatemalan quetzal, making their dreams of owning land in the mountains of Central America more affordable.

The new coffee bar will be strictly about the java. There will be no soda, perhaps a small selection of teas and maybe some pastries and other small snack items, but only if they accentuate the coffee, Holliday is quick to add.

“The one thing we want to express is our love of coffee,” he said.