Foster Coffee Co. fosters community in Eaton Rapids

When former BlackDog Coffee owner Lisa Barna decided to close up shop, she had already tapped her successor.

Foster Coffee Co. co-owner Nicholas Pidek had helped Barna set up shop in 2022, and BlackDog bought its beans from Foster as well. An open offer from Pidek to buy the business thus meant an easy transition for the downtown Eaton Rapids coffee shop.

“It meant there wasn’t another empty space in downtown Eaton Rapids,” Pidek said. “The shop was able to continue on, and we just brought what Foster does to it.”

On Feb. 12, BlackDog served its last lattes. On April 25, Foster Coffee Co. opened in the location, serving coffee and espresso drinks made with homemade, natural syrups. The shop also sells food offerings, including sandwiches, wraps and housemade pastries, and has a second room that can serve as an event space. It is Foster’s third location, following its original Owosso location and its second in East Lansing.

“Coffee shops naturally create a gathering space,” Pidek said. “I think about it in terms of ‘third place’ theory: a first place being your home, a second place being where you work, and a third place being where you have community.

“Everyone has Starbucks to thank for that, whatever you think of their company or practices,” he continued. “They really drove coffee shops as a space for people to gather.”

A little over a month after opening, Pidek said the event space has been used by all sorts of people.

“We have some groups that rent out the space and sell tickets,” he said, “and then we also have groups that just meet here during business hours.”

Creating a community space is Pidek’s priority, but the drinks are important to him, too. He said intentionality is a focus for the company, which is why it buys local as often as possible and makes many products, such as its flavored syrups, in-house.

“We don’t use preservatives or crazy artificial sweeteners,” Pidek said. “Our vanilla syrup is actual vanilla extract and organic sugar. You may drink a vanilla latte and not care where the vanilla came from, but we do.”

The chai, for which many shops use a storebought concentrate, is also made in-house. The baked goods were once purchased wholesale but are now made in-house to meet Foster’s standards.

“We kept buying baked goods from other vendors, but it wasn’t the excellence we wanted to provide,” Pidek said. “So now we have a bakery in Owosso, and all our baked goods are made fresh and from scratch, with no pre-mixes.”

Having a third location open is a dream come true for Pidek, for whom shuttering the entire operation during the COVID-19 lockdown is a recent memory. During that time, he worked a remote tech job but found himself anxious to get back to Foster.

“I have a lot of respect for the cybersecurity industry and remote work,” he said, “but there’s something different about being here in person. I just wanted to get back behind the counter.”