Timber Grounds located in downtown South Bend.
A new coffee shop has sprouted in downtown South Bend. Local Pacific County Deputy Jesse Eastham and his mother have opened a shop as a sort of "business venture." The shop is open from Monday to Friday from 5:30am to 6pm, and on Saturday and Sunday from 7am to 5pm.
Owner Jesse Eastham spoke on the new business: "Right now my mom (Carolyn Eastham) is a partial owner. She deals with the financial things and I'm in charge of the product, maintenance and employees. We have about ten people on staff already," said Eastham. Eastham went on to talk about how his mother had partial ownership so that he could focus on his job as a deputy with Pacific County, "I'm still a deputy of Pacific County and that is my priority. The partial ownership is so that I can keep that as my priority," said Eastham.
The Eastham's opened the shop as a sort of response to what they saw as a rise in demand for coffee, "We opened a coffee shop because we thought it was super popular right now for people to want coffee, and there has been a demand for it. So me and my mom kind of figured we should give it a shot. The owner of the property was very generous in letting us give this a shot on her property. The property is not ours. The owner was very understanding and supportive in the business start up and was willing to help in any way that she could," said Eastham.
The shop opened on Friday, April 15 as a sort of soft opening. Though the opening was not advertised, Timber Grounds has been overwhelmingly busy: "We never promoted anything because a lot of our staff is inexperienced and we have a few trainers and we don't necessarily know where everything is at and so because of that we never promoted anything," said Eastham. Jesse thinks the business is due in part to the fact that they have been working on the building in the middle of the downtown for at least two months, "We've been working on this building for the last few months and everyone saw and would ask what and when this was going to happen and so we would give them a rough date when we would open," said Eastham.
Be sure to stop by and support the new kick-starting business in downtown South Bend and have them brew you a tasty coffee drink.