The brand new Wanderlust Espresso store in West Lafayette, Indiana. All photos courtesy of Wanderlust Espresso.
Wanderlust Espresso has opened its second cafe in West Lafayette, Indiana, providing parts that could be be acquainted to followers of Wanderlust’s unique location in Lafayette whereas venturing into some new territory.
Close to the Purdue Analysis Park, the brand new 1,800-square-foot cafe presents a smaller model of the unique lending library, whereas the menu of drinks, pastries and bagels is essentially the identical. As on the first store, a big mural of a barista at work towers over the brand new store’s high-ceilinged area. But in its basic design, the brand new store wanders down a special path.
“It feels extra grown-up and extra refined, however not in a approach that feels too critical,” Wanderlust Espresso Founder Walt Cornelius informed Day by day Espresso Information. “The brand new store appears like a pure subsequent step from the unique. They’re completely different in model and scale, however they share the identical purpose, to make folks really feel snug, cared for and excited concerning the espresso.”
Cornelius, who hand-built the bar and different fixtures within the first cafe, stated the second store started with a bar designed to really feel like a big, heavy block of concrete anchoring the room.
A La Marzocco GB5 with customized carmine-red accents is matched by pops of shade all through the area. Domestically made black metal tables add one other uncooked, industrial observe, balanced by herringbone wooden seating, crops, heat lighting and different natural textures.
“For me, the purpose was to push the sting of a brutalist-inspired cafe with out letting it really feel chilly or uninviting,” Cornelius stated. “The result’s an area that feels trendy and design-forward, however nonetheless snug — a spot the place the espresso, the bar, and the room all really feel related.”
Open since January, the brand new store arrived nearly precisely two years after Wanderlust’s first. Within the interim, the corporate’s roasting shifted from a 2-kilogram-capacity Buckeye roaster in Brookston to a Bellwether Sequence 2 machine that Cornelius stated will quickly get replaced by a Probat P12.
Close to Purdue College in a fast-changing a part of West Lafayette, the brand new store serves a mixture of college students, professionals and households. Behind the bar are the 3-group GB5, a Mahlkönig E65 GBW for espresso and Marco batch brew and chilly brew programs paired with a Mahlkönig EK43.
“Espresso is the explanation folks are available in, however hospitality is what makes them really feel like they belong,” Cornelius stated. “We wish each one who walks by means of the door to really feel revered, welcomed and cared for, no matter who they’re or the place they arrive from.”
Shifting ahead, a 1975 Winnebago espresso truck stays a piece in progress, as is a devoted bakery that might enable the corporate to broaden its wholesale providers farther into Indiana.
“The unique store helped us determine who we had been,” Cornelius stated. “The brand new store exhibits the place we’re headed.”
Wanderlust Espresso is positioned at 1020 Gemini Lane #150, in West Lafayette.
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the affiliate editor of Day by day Espresso Information by Roast Journal. He’s based mostly in Portland, Oregon.
