Local coffee company closes one of its Tacoma cafes after twice trying to make it work

A Puyallup-based coffee company has given up on its Stadium District cafe for the second time in a year. This time it’s for good, Anthem Coffee co-founder Bryan Reynolds confirmed in a September email.

The announcement was first shared on social media July 31.

The shop originally opened in 2018 at 102 N. G Street on the ground floor of The Stadium Apartments, which began welcoming residential tenants that summer. It hummed along — through the pandemic and only-just-finished construction of Sound Transit’s Link extension — for almost five years, but it failed to become a profitable location, Reynolds told The News Tribune.

It was also across from a Starbucks, which he admitted was “an ambitious move.”

After closing in August 2022, Anthem reopened the Stadium cafe last December.

The circumstances had changed, Reynolds said at the time. Starbucks had closed, for one, and Merrill Gardens, a senior living facility with 115 units, would open in early 2023.

“I think the recipe is in place now,” he said then.

Turns out, no.

“Long story short, we just didn’t have the amount of foot traffic and customers we needed to even break even,” he wrote in response to questions about the closure. “We felt it was finally time to cut our losses and move on.”

In addition to the flagship outpost and two others in Puyallup, Anthem operates cafes in Tacoma’s Old Town neighborhood, the Museum District of Pacific Avenue and at Point Ruston. This summer, it added a drive-thru-only shop in Edgewood.

“Part of our future growth plan is to have a cluster of drive-thru locations to complement our cafes,” said Reynolds, who started the company with his wife and parents in 2011.

On Aug. 12, Anthem announced that it had acquired two coffee shops in Buckeye, Arizona, just west of Phoenix in Maricopa County.