![]() “We had always targeted Richmond as our next logical step,” he notes. That first taste of selling coffee in the River City convinced FitzHenry that his next move must be a brick and mortar in Virginia’s capital. ![]() That is until the launch of a pop-up coffee shop at Champion Brewing Co. Since that harrowing first year of operations in 2014, FitzHenry has added two more locations around Albemarle County, with a cafe in Crozet serving as Grit’s farthest outpost outside of Charlottesville. It gives you chances to improve their lives every day, but it also entails many opportunities to stumble.” “Coffee is a unique industry because you often see your customers daily. “It was obviously a steep learning curve figuring out how to run three coffee shops in the first year,” he says. The opportunity ultimately proved too good to pass up. “We were trying to shake up that rote transaction between the barista and the customer to create connections with people.”Īfter two other owner-operated cafes were shuttered within his first year in the coffee industry, FitzHenry quickly found himself contemplating a rapid expansion. “At that point, our product was really the shop itself and the experience the customer had with us,” he says. Grit’s flagship location near the campus of the University of Virginia had been a coffee shop for years before FitzHenry snapped it up, elevated the customer experience and made Grit into a staple of the Charlottesville coffee scene. Grit’s newest cafe, a storefront on Libbie Avenue in the West End, represents the brand’s first foray into Richmond but FitzHenry’s sixth location overall. Whatever the challenge encountered, cycling is evidently a very good answer.Opening a coffeehouse in a new city in the middle of a pandemic may seem overly ambitious, but Dan FitzHenry, the owner of Grit Coffee, has never shied away from a good opportunity to grow his business. Plus columns from Ned Boulting, Orla Chennaoui and Lotta Henttala.Įnjoy our mix of resilient, globetrotting adventurers. There’s an Amanda Spratt interview, Svein Tuft on his GBduro off-road epiphany, a photo tale of two starkly different world cyclo-cross champs - pre-pandemic and mid-pandemic – and a lively history of Lotto-Soudal, the Belgian team sponsoring for almost 40 years, featuring Thomas De Gendt. It was a beacon of inspiration for women racers during the 1990s downturn in the international scene. ![]() We recount the tale of the leading 17-day Ore Ida women’s race in America: the UCI called it too hard and refused to ratify it the organisers didn’t care. ![]() Expect tangents and colourful stories galore. Meanwhile, ahead of LeBlanq’s sumptuous seven-course summer feast and cycle with Eddy Merckx, Bradley Wiggins, Sean Yates and Michelin-starred chef Ashley Palmer-Watts chew the fat about the Belgian legend and their own careers. Emily Chappell fights an evocative existential battle on Mont Ventoux while Isla Short makes light work of the Highland snow in a Rouleur Explore debut on the trail of folk hero Rob Roy with Orbea. We’ve got Lachlan Morton going around the world in 80 ways, tackling all terrain with a smile. In this edition of Rouleur, we celebrate grit, defiance and tough cookies who take the routes less travelled, confronting challenges in the process – whether they’re the sporting ones they signed up for or more profound issues that emerge unexpectedly. Each issue is classic and collectable, bringing together the very best cycling writers and photographers to convey the essence, passion and beauty of road racing. The finest cycling journal in the world, published eight times a year.
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