Love Brews coffee shop opens in downtown Louisville
Shanda Williams was visiting her friend Brandy Sutton near Louisville last year when she took a 40 minute drive to Thomson to pick up a chai tea from Starbucks.
“It was 5:23 p.m. when I got there and they had closed at 5 p.m.,” Williams said. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, I drove all this way, please’...and they were like, ‘Sorry, we’re closed.’ So I drove back and I said to Brandy, ‘This is ridiculous, we should open a coffee shop.’ She told me they had been talking about doing that for years.”
And that’s how Love Brews Coffee Shop, now located at 605 Peachtree Street in Louisville, came to be. The new shop, which offers a variety of coffees, teas and other drinks, as well as breakfast and lunch sandwiches, opened March 1 and the Chamber of Commerce recently held a special ribbon cutting for the new local business.
Sutton said that the friends started talking about opening a shop in September of 2023 and they were in the old Station Donuts building within a couple hours of the owner announcing the building was up for sale.
“I moved out here about 12 years ago, but we are west coast people and we’re used to having coffee shops on every corner,” Sutton said. “We have a full menu of espresso. Anything you can get at any of the major chains you can get here, plus a lot of flavors.”
The shop offers Italian sodas, a full line of flavors, a variety of which are sugar-free.
“We have around 49 single flavors. And for the people who don’t want fluffy drinks, we do have drip coffee in hot or iced, regular or decaf,” Sutton said.
Specialty drinks at Love Brews include several available as either hot or iced coffees. The Noah’s Ark features white chocolate, peanut butter and almond roca. The Cain and Able is your classic chocolate and vanilla breve. The Shepherd includes vanilla and caramel breve with caramel drizzle. And the Pharaoh features chocolate, thick caramel and English toffee. Their Red Bull infusion drink is called The Resurrection.
“When I hear Love Brews I think of Hebrews and so we decided, since God placed this in our lives, we wanted to bring Him into it as much as possible,” Sutton said. “So we went with the Biblical names for the specialty drinks,” Sutton said. “We want to make sure He is at for forefront of our daily lives.”
Williams said that they pride themselves on the fact that all of their coffee beans are roasted locally by Vince Unruh’s Good Times coffee company.
“This is a passion for Vince,” she said. “We visited him. He made me a cup and I drank the whole thing. In most coffee, even in coffee flavored cakes and things there is a bitterness, but in his coffee that flavor isn’t the main thing you taste.”
Love Brews also makes donuts and breakfast sandwiches fresh every morning and offers ham and turkey sandwiches and wraps at lunch as well.
“When we were trying to figure out the name for the shop I said I would like for it to have the word ‘Love’ and Brandi goes, ‘Brews.’ It was instant. It’s about caring for our fellow man. We’re compassionate people. We enjoy humanity,” Williams said. “We offer a 50 percent discount on one item per day for veterans and first responders. We are appreciative of their public service and sacrifice and so we give back to them.”
Love Brews is open Mondays through Fridays 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Love Brews coffee shop opens in downtown Louisville
