Maryville — The craft beer scene has grown tremendously in Knoxville in recent years, and now more coffee shops are hopping on the trend.
On Wednesday Vienna Coffeehouse in Maryville will open a remodeled interior and six new beer kegs. Initially the shop had hoped to open with the new offerings on Tuesday.
"The advent of the coffee beers is a big part of it," Vienna Coffee roastmaster John Clark said. "The collaboration between the craft brewing industry, which is exploding around here, and then the explosion of good coffee around here, it's just timely to kind of take the next step for us."
Hexagon Brewing and Elkmont Exchange are two local breweries that use coffee from Vienna Coffee Company in one of their beers.
Honeybee Coffee opened on Sevier Avenue in South Knoxville a year and a half ago and also has craft beer offerings.
In late 2017, Vienna opened a coffee shop in the Regas Building on North Gay Street in downtown Knoxville and added four taps. However, Clark says the decision to add alcohol to the menu at Vienna Coffeehouse in Maryville was not taken lightly.
"In fact it's with some trepidation that we're adding alcohol because the teenagers are a big part of our business here," Clark said. "From 3 til 6 every afternoon this place is just chock-a-block full of high school, home school and college kids, and many of those of course are not even drinking age."
Clark expects alcohol sales to benefit the coffeehouse's music program and he eventually plans to offer wine as well.
"We're not trying to be a bar. We trying to be a coffeehouse with available alcoholic beverages, so we'll just have six taps," Clark said. "They'll all be local, craft breweries, and then we will have the ultralights for the CrossFit guys, but we'll have that in bottles."
Vienna Coffeehouse remodeled the kitchen and barista area to make room for the kegs. It will be closed on Monday to reconfigure the shop after the overhaul and will reopen on Wednesday.