In the last six years, many florist-café arrangements have propagated across the country, offering patrons artisanal coffee, tea and baked goods in lush environs. They can be found growing anywhere from New York to California and Miami to Minnesota.
Combination plant-cafes are often essentially greenhouses full of vibrant, leafy plants with an espresso machine planted in the middle. Talk about earthy! For urban tea- and coffee-lovers, these shops offer a much-needed hit of caffeine and serotonin, as well as some just-as-needed Wi-Fi. What better place to work from your laptop than surrounded by greenery, while sipping your coffee and trying a tasty pastry?
Duc Huynh, owner of Dandy Lion Coffee in Denver, CO., speculates that the coffee-plant combination works because “they share an aesthetic.” And, from a retail perspective, selling plants, coffee, pastry – including their creative ginger pear danish with cocoa nibs — in one shop helps with “maximizing your space.”
Sharon Grant agrees. As co-owner of Little Green A Plant Bar in Redwood City, CA., Grant says that the coffee and pastries are more popular in the low season, but the retail is “going gangbusters” through fall and winter. “It is funny when somebody has an idea,” she says, remembering plant bars in San Francisco that she used to frequent a number of years ago. “We’re not living in a vacuum. It seems to crop up in different places.”
Michelle Buckman, owner of Blossom Café, located in the garden center Floral & Hardy in Skippack, PA, says they are “committed to coffee, community and carbs.” Signs on their to-go boxes also implore customers to “eat more carbs,” and Blossom’s signature snack, the flowerpot muffin, encourages them even more. In an interview with Daily Coffee News, Buckman notes that grafting coffee shops with plant shops works because “[t]he two customer bases definitely help each other. [They] definitely generate revenue for each other.”
Indeed, specialty coffee sales are on the rise. Though most coffee consumption still happens at home, facilitated by drip-coffee makers and single-cup brewers, the specialty-coffee market is also flourishing. The National Coffee Association’s Spring 2024 data trends report found that American adults are buying 7.5% more specialty drinks than they were in 2023. Of those specialty coffee drinks, NCA reported that “lattes are the most popular espresso-based beverage, followed by [espressos and cappuccinos].”
Likewise, according to Garden Center Magazine, “Interest in houseplants has steadily climbed throughout the last decade, and due to the pandemic, purchases skyrocketed.” Of those purchases, Greenhouse Magazine reported that the top-five most popular houseplants in 2022 were succulents, philodendrons, pothos, monstera, and ferns.
Perhaps coffee and plants could be described as companion plants: specific varieties that are planted together to facilitate growth. Amongst its gardening tips, The Almanac recommends companion planting as “the practice of growing one plant to help another as part of a community.”
Clearly, there’s something to this idea, as plant cafes continue to bloom in and around many metropolitan areas. Some joint ventures began as garden centers that added cafes, such as Blossom Café. Other establishments germinated both ideas at the same time. Regardless of the seed, the cafes grew organically; most establishments were unaware that so many other people also thought that coffee and plants made a natural combination.
Grant began her journey with selling succulent arrangements out of her home and at a local coffee shop. Near the end of the pandemic year, Grant partnered with Michael Bell, a manager of that shop, to embark on their own joint plant-coffee venture. “Plants are lovely. To sit amongst them, or to purchase, take one home. Working in the dirt,” Grant said, “I think, is something we’ve kind of lost.”
The space Grant and Bell chose for Little Green is near downtown Redwood City, CA, in a former 1960s car dealership that’s just off the town’s historic walk. The building’s big windows and wide doors are ideal for growing and moving plants.
“I’m still a succulent girl at heart,” Grant said, but she has learned to make coffee, too.
While Little Green’s spacious building lets in lots of sunlight for plants, a to-go bakery in Minnesota focuses more on pastries and flowers.
Erin Lucas, the pastry chef behind Flour & Flower, runs a tiny bakery with bouquets in St. Joseph, MN. The pastries are mostly grab-and-go, except for a few months in the summer when the weather allows for outdoor seating.
Lucas knew from a young age that cooking was “her path.” After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, she honed her pastry skills at Sun Street Breads in Minneapolis, MN.
As a teenager, she was intrigued by a novel, “Garden Spells,” about a magical garden, which grew plants that could be used for a purpose. She elaborated that characters in the book who ate lavender would fall in love, kids who drank chamomile would fall asleep and that people who ate chives had to tell the truth. Though Lucas was always drawn to plants and pastries, her partner, Mateo Mackbee, chef of his own restaurant, came up with the idea to combine her interests.
This spring, Lucas made chive blossom-and-cheddar scones and lemon-blueberry muffins, which she described as “simple and lovely.” Other popular spring pastries include her raspberry-passionfruit scone, made of two layers of scone dough with a passionfruit-and-raspberry curd in between. It’s “crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside,” Lucas says.
She gets fresh produce close by: from the bakery’s garden lot and a neighbor’s “pseudo-community garden” behind the bakery. “She grows stuff and I go pick it,” Lucas says, explaining that sometimes they barter: produce for pastries.
One of the main attractions at Flour & Flower is pie. Business picks up during the autumnal months, when Lucas and her team bake 500 pies for Thanksgiving. But even during the summer, she bakes key lime, strawberry rhubarb and blueberry swamp pies, which patrons can find and order online.Cookies and scones are the favorites at Flowers on the Park, a florist shop that showcases designer bouquets and high-end pastries. Specifically, customers love the Nani’s Dough chocolate chip cookies by Nani Edry, who competed on the Food Network’s “Bake You Rich.” Edry’s cookies are thick and chewy, dotted with chunks of dark and milk chocolate chips, and lightly sprinkled with sea salt. Edry’s blueberry and raspberry-white-chocolate scones are crispy on the outside, moist and flavorful on the inside.
Pastries from New York’s Balthazar Bakery are also popular at the local Flowers on the Park, according to owner Avi Tamir. The café carries Balthazar’s chocolate croissants, almond croissants and sticky buns with nuts.
The PlantShed Café on New York’s Amsterdam Avenue usually sells out of teddy bear financiers and fruit scones by the afternoon. In fact, one location has a customer that staff call “The Scone Guy,” who comes in almost every day for fruit scones. He likes these fruit scones so much that he’s emailed multiple PlantShed managers, asking them to stock more so that they don’t sell out so fast. Both the scones and teddy bear financiers come from Colson Patisserie.
Barista Red Panier says that matcha is one of the most-ordered drinks on the menu. For connoisseurs of the tea, PlantShed locations make unsweetened matcha and matcha lattes with Ippodo matcha from Japan. In the spring, customers with sweet teeth could also order a creative, floral-inspired drink made with matcha, lavender syrup, vanilla syrup, rose syrup and milk.
At Little Green, Grant offers small-batch pastries, such as crumble coffee cake, and a variety of fresh croissants from Cocola Bakery, which is five minutes away. “We get them fresh every morning,” Grant says. Little Green’s biggest hit is an English scone served warm with butter and jam.
Grant and Bell have created their own community around Little Green by featuring a bouquet of wares, classes and events. Individuals or groups gathering for birthday parties and team-building events may plant succulent arrangements at the plant bar. (The space can also be rented for private events.) But since opening, Grant has also hosted artists who teach jewelry-making and stained-glass art. On the weekends, Little Green – which is named for the Joni Mitchell song – nourishes both plants and people with live music from local musicians and improv jazz nights. “We’re trying to support local artists,” Grant says, and “get people out again to enjoy live music.”
Similarly, Buckman’s Blossom Cafe is filling out the community in Skippack, PA.
Lowell Steinberg’s garden center is a mainstay for 15 years in Skippack, PA and has developed a loyal base of customers, including Buckman, who describes spending time buying and planting succulents there with other residents, and wishing to extend the time before she opened the cafe. “It might be nice to sit and hang out and stay,” she recalls thinking. “If we could offer seating and coffee.”
Lowell invited her to open the café within the garden center, which was the first coffee shop in the village. “The need was there,” Buckman remembers, and “the space and a willing partner.”
This spring, Buckman created a range of plant-inspired specialty beverages, such as a cherry blossom latte made with white chocolate and cherry syrup, and a pothos latte composed of coffee with honey jasmine syrup. This summer, she’s offering lemonade raspberry boba tea and a butterfly tea lemonade, which is an herbal tea mixed with lemonade.
At Dandy Lion Coffee, Huynh says that his “biggest driving force” is his love of coffee culture. “People meet up with their friends they haven’t seen in a while,” he says, pointing out that especially after COVID, people wanted to catch up and share a cup of coffee.
Across the country, companion plant-cafes are being pollinated by excited customers looking for a third place to indulge, socialize and build community, and the concept will likely keep sprouting.
(This article appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)
You must be logged in to post a comment.