Panama Red Coffee Closing Concord Location

The Panama Red Coffee Company plans to close its café in Concord, California in December 2013, vacating a commercial retail space that will be converted into a craft beer taproom.

The overhead for doing business at the space was too high, confirmed owner Steve Welty on Wednesday, which inspired the café to find a new space in which to conduct business.

“It just didn’t work out the way we wanted it to,” Westly told Patch. “We ran out of gas, ideas, and time,” he said. He is in the process of signing a lease on a smaller space in Walnut Creek, where he will reinvent his company's brand and discard the Panama Red name.    

When the café relocates, it will relinquish a chunk of the downtown Concord coffee consumer market to large franchises. Concord has 32 coffee shops for its 124,711 residents, according to yelp.com and the U.S. Census, respectively. Thirteen of those cafés are Starbucks Coffee Company brand franchises, while four of them belong to the Peet’s Coffee & Tea brand. 

Only two small “mom and pop” cafés will remain within walking distance of Todos Santos Plaza, which is considered the city’s central park. The closest is the Sugar Plum Coffee Shop on Colfax St. However, it is more of a diner than a café culture hot spot in which people interact with each other through laptops or board games. Sugar Plum does not provide wireless internet access, according to employees. 

Main Street Property Services manages the lease for Suites J and K of 2151 Salvio St., the space currently inhabited by Panama Red. It declined to reveal how much it costs per square foot to rent those suites. A space on the second floor of the Salvio Pacheco Square shopping center costs about $1.50 per square foot to rent, according to Transwestern Real Estate, which manages some of center's lease contracts.

Main Street Property Services did say Suites J and K will be leased to a boutique brewery that will be called “The Hop Grenade" when the contract with Panama Red expires. 
 
It is unclear when that business will open, although when it does, it will be a unique taproom, according to Grant Spilman, administrative coordinator for the City of Concord’s Planning Division. On October 8, the city’s planning department approved Hop Grenade LLC’s development application to build a craft beer taproom, a broadcast studio, and a retail sales area, Spilman told Patch. The new taproom can be open from 11:30 a.m.- 1 a.m. Monday through Sunday, according to the conditions of its development agreement.

Westly said that while it will be hard for him to leave Concord, he is enthusiastic about the prospects for the new space in Walnut Creek. He intends to “evolve” the company, give it a new name, and a new feel.

“We’re not really a coffee shop,” he explained. “Coffee is just a vehicle that gets people into our store. We’re really about making a difference in someone’s day. It’s going to be fun to see how people react to to it.”

Westly intends to open his new café in February 2014.