Coffee, pastries and Roman-style pizza are joining the lineup. Creatures Coffee is a new cafe developed with Home Island Coffee Partners.
Strange Fellows Brewing at 1345 Clark Dr. has unveiled a redesigned tasting room, an expanded kitchen and Creatures Coffee, a new cafe developed with Home Island Coffee Partners.
The changes add morning cafe service to a space long associated with craft beer. The coffee program also borrows a familiar idea from the brewery: reusable containers that customers can bring back for refills.
Roman-style pizza joins the menu
The renovated kitchen’s menu centres on Roman-style pizza made with slow-fermented focaccia dough. Loaded nachos, Talisman-marinated chicken wings and other dishes designed for sharing round out the food offering.
Pizza and beer are a familiar combination, but the expanded kitchen gives food a larger role at the brewery. The menu is built for a lunch stop or a few plates shared over drinks, with food and beer service beginning at noon.
Creatures Coffee’s menu includes espresso drinks, batch coffee, rotating roasts, nitro cold brew and tea. Pastries come from ExAnimo Baked Goods.
The café opens at 7 a.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. on weekends, according to the relaunch announcement. That brings an early coffee stop to the Clark Drive brewery, with pastries available before the kitchen begins lunch service.
The coffee project began with a small roaster tucked among the fermentation tanks. Co-founder and brewmaster Iain Hill says the team started experimenting with roasting beans for their own enjoyment before deciding to share the results.
“Our curiosity around taste and process inevitably led us deep down the coffee rabbit hole,” Hill says in the release.
Creatures Coffee is introducing reusable tins for freshly roasted beans. The system follows the brewery’s growler model: customers bring back the container and fill it again.
The blue-and-white illustrated tins have coloured labels identifying the coffees. The refill option gives customers a reason to bring the packaging back when it’s time to restock, applying the growler routine to the beans for tomorrow morning’s coffee.
Strange Fellows opened in 2014. Co-founder and co-owner Aaron Jonckheere describes the relaunch as a response to the way craft beer has matured and the broader audience its spaces now serve.
“The industry has shifted from a fringe-led movement to a sophisticated sector catering to a wide variety of people,” Jonckheere says.
—This post originally appeared on Vancouver Is Awesome
