Peaberry Coffee, the hyper-local neighborhood café located on Kiest Boulevard, is expanding its coffee community into another part of Oak Cliff.
Over the weekend, owner Elijah Salazar signed a lease to open a new Peaberry location in Elmwood, about two miles from the original shop in Kiestwood. The building of the new location (2105 S. Edgefield Ave.) was recently purchased by new owners, and Salazar says they reached out to him about a vacancy.
“They want that feel that Peaberry has in their own neighborhood,” he says. “It’s community-focused.”
Community has been a central theme of Salazar’s mission since Peaberry opened in 2019. The coffee shop’s Facebook page boasts photos of new menu items and events tailored to the Kiestwood neighborhood, and most of the posts are written in English and Spanish.
Salazar is from Oak Cliff, and his goal was to keep Peaberry as local as possible. An Elmwood location would do just that, he says.
“I’ve always wanted to focus on neighborhoods and communities within Oak Cliff,” Salazar says. “I feel like so much of Oak Cliff is untapped.”
Although Peaberry Coffee will open a storefront in Elmwood, the new location isn’t the café’s first venture outside of Kiestwood. It’s technically not its first in Elmwood. The coffee shop produces Kiestwood Iced Coffee, its canned coffee drinks, in a building not far from the new location. Kiestwood Iced Coffee took off during the pandemic when dining in person—or going out in general—wasn’t safe.
The canned coffee was initially an experiment, but it helped keep his business alive throughout the pandemic.Salazar says it was only a matter of time before his team opened up another shop for the community.
Salazar says he’s not sure if the Elmwood shop will have its own dedicated canned coffee, but he’s certain that the location will be just as embedded in the neighborhood as its Kiestwood counterpart. He’s considered naming some drinks after streets in Elmwood or prominent figures. Salazar says he’s mostly excited that the new space will also give the team room to experiment with different kinds of coffee, like pour-overs or coffee flights.
An expediter was hired to speed up the process of opening the Elmwood storefront, Salazar says. The plan is to be up and running by early 2023.
Peaberry Coffee | 2446 W Kiest Blvd.; the new Peaberry Coffee location, slated to open early next year, will be at2105 S. Edgewood Ave.