1156 South Burdick Street
Kalamazoo
269-220-5001
OWNERS: Shelby and Brian Pierce
BREWER: Brian Pierce
FLAGSHIP BEERS: Dagwood’s Wife, a blonde ale; Fearless the Idiot, an IPA; Rooibos, an amber ale made with lemon chiffon rooibos tea
BRITE EYES BREWING COMPANY IN KALAMAZOO HAS AN UNUSUAL BUSINESS MODEL. IT’S BOTH A BREWERY AND A COFFEE HOUSE THAT’S OPEN FOR BREAKFAST.
Brian and Shelby Pierce didn’t start out with the idea of serving breakfast and beer. The original concept for their business was a coffee shop that serves beer and a brewery that serves coffee—and it would be open afternoons and evenings.
Brian wanted a microbrewery, but Shelby—a nondrinker—wanted to offer an artisan experience for designated drivers and nondrinkers, thus the coffee. They pictured their brewery/coffee shop as a place where people could come and have a beer with friends or a cup of coffee while reading a book or working on their computers. It would be a combination of barley and beans, malts and grounds, and the people who poured wouldn’t be called baristas; they would be beeristas.
They found the perfect location in a former women’s clothing boutique at the corner of South Burdick Street and Crosstown Parkway—an unusual and slightly funky building that screams 1950s architecture. When they looked around the area, they quickly realized that they should rethink their idea. The location was just south of downtown Kalamazoo, directly across the street from a county courthouse and the city’s public safety department and down the hill from a major regional medical center. If they were going to be a coffeehouse, the location demanded that they should be open in the morning for people going to work.
But when they opened their doors in August 2015, they realized that many of their early-morning customers were cops and hospital workers going home from work, and they were looking to have both breakfast (because it’s morning) and a beer (because it’s the end of their work day).
And the concept of eggs and kegs was born.
Brian and Shelby Pierce, owners of Brite Eyes.
Brite Eyes opens for breakfast at 8 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and at 10 a.m. on Sundays. After a year of opening at 7 a.m. every day of the week, Brian and Shelby were forced to make the difficult decision to cut the number of hours; the staff was just being stretched too thin and something had to give. Now the brewery is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays to give Brian time to make beer, and the evening hours have been extended a bit to give customers time to consume it.
People come in throughout the day to sit and chat. At any one time there might be tables filled with senior citizens, off-duty cops, a Bible study group from one of the nearby churches, or a book group talking about that month’s read.
They’re attracted by the consumables, but they’re also drawn by the feel of this hybrid business. Brite Eyes seems more like a vintage 1950s diner than anything else. Brightly colored red, yellow, orange, green, and blue gray panels on the walls above the window provide color without being imposing. There’s a mishmash of taps and coffeemakers behind the bar, and the open kitchen is a mixture of brewing and cooking equipment. There’s a gently curving balcony overhead that serves as Shelby’s office and helps to give the space a more intimate feel. The tables are made from old butcher blocks, and the windows reach from the floor to near the ceiling, letting in light and bringing an outdoor feel indoors.
“It’s a great space,” Brian says. “We looked at a lot of spaces and knew this was the right place as soon as we walked in. We wanted high ceilings and lots of windows. We want it to be light and bright. We want it to be as much a brewery as it is a coffeehouse and vice versa.”
Despite the happy accident that came with the location, Brian and Shelby have carefully calculated their plans for the brewery. They started small intentionally. They’d seen many area breweries start out with big grand-opening celebrations, only to quickly run out of beer, killing their business. The Pierces built their business incrementally. After opening they added a wine and mead license. Then they built a patio on the lawn facing the intersection and added dinner and children’s menus. And only after that did they grow from a one-barrel to a three-barrel brewing system.
That calculating approach has extended to the brewery’s hours—it closes at 11 p.m. on weeknights and at midnight on weekends. One thing Brian and Shelby knew when they decided that theirs would be a brewery that served breakfast was that they would need to get up early, ready to go to work with Brite Eyes.