Cutters Point flagship store receives update, expansion

After 21 years in business, the Cutters Point flagship store is getting a facelift — and some breathing room.

The store, located at 5500 Olympic Drive in the Olympic Village shopping complex, closed for a remodel May 1, and is expected to reopen to customers in June, said owner and founder Brooke Payne.

“After owning (the store) for 21 years, she was just really, really tired,” Payne said. “We finally had an opportunity to grab more space that was made available next door to us.”

The location will be adding 1,300 square feet to its original 975-square-foot space, bringing customers a grand total of 2,275 square feet of refurbished space.

“We’ll be by far the biggest coffee shop in town,” Payne said. “We really wanted to have a real authentic, original feel.”

The new space will feature a reclaimed lumber interior with open posts and beams to give an older feel to the space.

“It will look like a warehouse from a hundred years ago or a Gig Harbor netshed,” Payne explained. “We wanted to build something that no one had seen before and that would truly be a remarkable place for people to come and hang out.”

Along with the added space for customers to spread out, the remodel will include a conference room available for meetings and larger gatherings.

Also included in the expansion is the addition of beer and wine in the evenings and an expanded food menu that includes a variety of foods including flatbreads to salads, sliders to cheese platters.

“We’re really in the people business, not the coffee business,” Payne said. “That’s what we’re really about: people.”

The location was first opened as an Austin Chase Coffee in 1989, the first coffee shop in Gig Harbor.

Payne, a longtime Gig Harbor resident and Gig Harbor High School graduate, purchased the store in 1995 and operated it as an Austin Chase for five years before opening his own coffee roasting facility and rebranding as Cutters Point in 2000.

Franchises of the company have been opened throughout Gig Harbor and the Puget Sound, with the most recent location inside the new Main & Vine store.

Along with the expansion of the flagship store, the production facilities have been moved and expanded also to meet demands for Cutters Point brand coffee, with added equipment to expand capacity by six times.

The new production facility and offices will be located in the 4900 block of 33rd Avenue, behind the 4700 building on Point Fosdick Drive.

“We really just want to create a place in Gig Harbor that has wow factor and have our great award-winning coffee,” Payne said. “We’re just trying to continue to stay with a high quality product. High quality service and high quality product.”

This story was originally published May 10, 2016 at 10:19 PM with the headline "Cutters Point flagship store receives update, expansion."