Contained in the Little Dreamer Espresso cafe in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood. All photographs courtesy of Little Dreamer Espresso.

Opening a brick-and-mortar espresso store could look like a pie-in-the-sky thought for some folks, however for the large dreamers behind Little Dreamer Espresso in Houston, it has translated into pies on plates.

Opened on Pi Day (March 14), the 1,800-square-foot store within the Montrose neighborhood occupies an 1,800-square-foot house previously occupied by one other Houston roaster, Greenway Espresso.

“We didn’t do something structural; we added some cabinets and stuff,” Little Dreamer Co-Founder and licensed Q Grader Matt Toomey informed Every day Espresso Information. “[Greenway] did some cool little adjustments to the bar that we’re benefiting from. We simply added our personal little smattering of taste onto it.”

The store’s wood bar now contains a pastel blue La Marzocco GB5 espresso machine with pink logos, whereas a vivid floral mural with complementing colours greets friends on the entrance. 

Exterior of espresso, Toomey is a instructor and a pupil at Houston’s Loveland Yoga, whose co-founder Annavy Phelan and teacher Laura Bennett had been the artists behind Little Dreamer’s mural. Artwork League Houston, an arts nonprofit, owns the constructing.

For its strong pie program, Little Dreamer depends on the skills of Houston-based baker Jane Wild, who for the Pi Day (Mar. 14) grand opening offered a wide array of pies comparable to blueberry rhubarb, salted honey, and a “pink eye” espresso chocolate pie.

“We bought like 480 slices of pie, which is fairly spectacular. I believed it was going to final all weekend, however we needed to name in additional pie,” mentioned Toomey. “There’s not plenty of specialty retailers the place you possibly can go and get a extremely good espresso expertise with pie, a lot much less actually gangster, cultishly, feverishly scrumptious pies from Jane.”

Based in 2021 by Toomey and his associate, Anna-Marie Toomey, the roasting firm initially opened a retail kiosk inside a seafoam-green transformed transport container at Stomping Grounds in Backyard Oaks. 

Though that location has since shut down, Little Dreamer has expanded its roasting operations, relocating from a small roastery in Galveston to a brand new 800-square-foot facility in East Houston. Inside, a 10-kilo Mill Metropolis Roasters machine helps brown the beans. 

“The brand new house is way larger and in a cooler a part of city, in an previous brick constructing that I actually like,” mentioned Toomey. “It’s an old-school espresso space of city. Maxwell Home and Folgers and stuff was once over in that normal neighborhood.”

Roasting for wholesale prospects will progressively develop, whereas the brand new location additionally calls for an uptick in manufacturing. Within the meantime, Toomey mentioned the store plans to incrementally ramp up manufacturing within the onsite kitchen. 

“We’re not too bold,” the Little Dreamer chief mentioned. “We’re centered on our personal area of high quality. Alternatives current themselves, and I all the time like to take a look at them. Till then, we’re simply going to try to steer this ship as finest as we are able to.”

Little Dreamer is positioned at 1953 Montrose Blvd in Houston. Feedback? Questions? Information to share? Contact DCN’s editors right here. For all the newest espresso trade information, subscribe to the DCN publication. 

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