Over the past couple of years, Tucker’s downtown has seen additions of unique restaurants and retail options, breathing new life into an already popular district. But last month, Main Street got a caffeinated jolt with the opening of The Corner Cup. The locally-owned coffee shop is looking to fill a void in the Tucker community.
“We decided to open in Tucker because a lot of people wanted us to,” owner Michael Vorndran explains. “Our vision is being a hub for the community. So, if it is high school kids hanging out after school, if it is college kids doing their study, if it’s a knitting group in here knitting…that’s what we want. We literally want people to come here and treat it like their home.”
The shop is the second in the area, with the original Corner Cup located on Lawrenceville Highway just west of Tucker. Vorndran says a lot of thought went into scouting out a second location.
“We found what shopping local and supporting local did in our first location, so we wanted to be at a place where we could truly be local, support local, be part of the community…which is why we chose Main Street.”
When Vorndran talks local, he means it. He gets coffee beans from Beanealogy in Poncey-Highland. Baked goods come from Atlanta staples Holeman & Finch and Emerald City Bagels. Gluten and soy-free options are baked by Atlanta’s Heavenly Cakes. The shop also features artwork for purchase from Tucker-area artists.
Ownership held a ribbon cutting on January 8 to celebrate their grand opening, but the work is far from done. In the coming months, they plan to expand The Corner Cup into the neighboring parcel formerly occupied by Snyder Cycles.
“The first phase will just be cutting a hole in the wall and joining the spaces and putting [in] seating. The second phase, in the next six months to a year, we’ll move the counterspace into the back so it’ll be pretty much an open floor plan [with] bigger, community style tables,” Vorndran says. “We don’t want to take away from what helped us build, which was sort of the Cheers of coffee shops, where we know people’s names and we know their drinks when they walk in.”
The Corner Cup is located at 2380 Main Street. You can find out more about the business on their website www.thecornercupcoffee.com.
