After months of being closed, the Village's only coffee shop will reopen today by new owners who plan on making what used to be the MT Cup bigger and better.
The Cup owners Wally Higgins and Martin George have redecorated the space, expanded the menu and planned programs to connect the business to its community.
Higgins said part of their goal is to make The Cup a coffee shop that people feel welcome to come in and go as they please.
"Restaurants don't like it if you sit for two hours," he said. "You can come here and sit for a zillion hours and not only is it OK, but it is, like, encouraged."
George said they knew a void would be left after the MT Cup closed.
"I cannot begin to express to you how saddening it was when it closed, maybe because there was no other place," he said. "It was like, 'What's everybody going to do?'"
THE JOURNEY
Higgins and George are both first time business owners. Higgins received a graduate degree from Ball State for counseling sciences and has worked as a mental health therapist.
George has a degree in interior design from Ball State and has worked in the interior design and gallery fields.
Higgins said he never planned to follow his business owner father's foot steps, who owned a VP grocery store, gas stations, delicatessens, pizza places, restaurants, bars, hotels and construction businesses.
"I cooked in a restaurant of his hotel for a couple of years, and I said I'd never own my own business, but this place is different," he said.
Higgins said they want to create an artistic place for people to come where they can get good coffee and food.
"I know that doesn't sound like much of a business plan because it has to be profitable to cover everything, but it's not about making tons of money," he said. "It's more about the experience of it."
THE MENU
Soon-to-be customers have gotten sneak peeks of new menu items such as bagel burgers and biscuits and bacon gravy through The Cup's Facebook page.
"I've pretty much been releasing things every few days, giving people sneak previews of what we're going have," senior telecommunications Michael Fisch said. "[I'm trying to] keep everyone interested [and] keep them guessing."
Higgins said The Cup's menu will have about 75 percent of the MT Cup's menu items. George said about two thirds of the menu will be vegetarian friendly.
MT Cup and The Cup employee and sophomore travel and tourism major Phoebe Higgins said they hope to cater to people who previously went to Blue Bottle and MT Cup through coffee and espresso drinks. The Cup's espresso will be ordered from Alliance World Coffees, which is where Blue Bottle ordered its espresso. The Cup will brew coffee from Chauvin Coffee Company, as the MT Cup did.
Most of its menu was planned by recent Ivy Tech culinary school graduate Samantha Karas. She brought the idea of biscuits and bacon gravy to the owners. She said when she initially suggested biscuits and gravy, Higgins and George said everyone does biscuits and gravy.
"I said, 'Well, why not do bacon gravy? No one around here does the bacon gravy,'" Karas said. "Then I brought in a sample a couple of weeks ago, and everyone was just absolutely in love with it."
She said having the opportunity to plan recipes, order products and schedule deliveries after graduating in December has been an unexpected experience.
"When I go to open my own place, I'll have the background and knowledge of actually doing it for a business instead of like a school project," she said. "I actually get to see how it is going to run and work out in the end, instead of just turning it in for a grade."
Karas said the big challenge she and the staff will have is to keep all items, such as their homemade bagels, available all day.
Another change will be that The Cup grill will be open all day, rather than MT Cup's grill only being open until early afternoon. Higgins said he also plans on having breakfast available until 6 p.m.
Karas has also made other changes to the menu such as the Alaskan Jewel, a bagel with smoked salmon, capers, red onions and tomatoes on it, which will be made with dill cream cheese instead of salmon cream cheese.
THE COMMUNITY
The Cup will connect to Ball State students and residents alike by hosting poetry slams, posting artwork and potentially bringing in acoustic musicians, George said.
"This is for everyone," he said. "It is important that the place be inclusive. If you can play nice with others, you can come do stuff here - that sort of thing."
The Cup will host an artist each month, which will allow the artist to hang enough of his or her artwork to fill the dining room of The Cup. The first featured artist will be Ball State alumnus Neal Soley.
The artwork just has to be approved by Higgins and George, and the artwork has to be ready to hang. Artists can sell their artwork if they'd like. Since The Cup won't be handling art sales, the owners will not take a cut of the profit.
Higgins said he is happy to recreate the community that was around the MT Cup.
"There were all of these people that I only know here that, literally, I haven't seen since it closed in December," he said. "I can hardly wait to see them again."
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