Tucked away in a mostly residential street on Indy’s east side is an unassuming garage where a small, independent coffee roaster has big plans. No bigger than 300 square feet, the space is divided by sinks, roasting stations, a fridge and a small table with a record player and speakers.
Bryan Daniel, the founder of Civic Coast Coffee, wants to be known for quality coffee and as a safe landing place for his neighborhood.
His small-batch roasting operation was inspired by a visit to Guatemala in 2000, when he first started appreciating good coffee.
“A good friend told me that if I really wanted to get the coffee experience of Guatemala, I needed to cold-turkey stop drinking coffee with sugar, milk and all the cream,” Daniel said.
From there, he began an unpretentious deep-dive into coffee. He sampled, researched and blogged about coffee under the name Indy Loves Coffee.
Bryan credits Indy’s coffee scene — full of friendly, patient and established roasters — as a launchpad for his learning. Through frequent visits to Tinker Coffee and other local roasters, he was able to grow his curious questions into his own experiments.
“Now that I’m a roaster, I know that I was probably inconveniencing them, but they never made me feel like I was a problem. They would always stop what they were doing and sell me a 4-ounce bag of specialty coffee,” he said.
After writing about coffee for several years, he was ready to get involved in the coffee community in a more tangible way.
Roasting, it turned out, was just the right lane to nerd out and root into Indianapolis’ coffee scene. In 2017, he participated in Tinker Coffee’s first Brewer’s Cup, hosted at Milktooth — and won. Imbued with newfound confidence, Daniel began taking his roasting hobby more seriously and invested in a 1-kg tabletop electric roaster.
“I put 10 pounds of discarded coffee into it and blew the hell out of it. I mean, black smoke was in the house. I didn’t know what I was doing. I think the fire department came once or twice,” he recalled with a laugh.
Hobby to wholesale
In fact, much of Daniel’s coffee roasting journey was trial and error. He taught himself with internet blogs and YouTube videos, experimented using coffees he picked up in his travels, and got help from local coffee makers.
He paid off early investors with “free” coffee and sold coffee through word-of-mouth orders and at small shops on the east side, like Dear Mom on 10th Street. Sometimes, he took on orders that would take him way too long to fulfill due to his small roaster.
Eventually, he knew he’d have to move his roasting operation out of his house and into its own space to get a proper wholesale business going. He began knocking on doors in his neighborhood and eventually connected with a landlord willing to rent him a garage off East Michigan Street at a “dream rate.”
“Tom Jones (the landlord) was just waiting, wanting to empower young people to have an opportunity to build community here and on the near east side,” Daniel said. “And that’s exactly what I’m looking for too. He’s investing in me so I can invest in the community.”
By mid-2025, after new plumbing and a series of upgrades, the space was ready for roasting. Daniel leveled up his gear to a 2-kg roaster, doubling his production. Now, he can crank out roughly 3 pounds per roast for a consistent brew.
The name Civic Coast Coffee is a nod to Daniel’s West Coast upbringing, skate culture and a sense of civic duty in showing up for your city — no matter where you’re from.
He’s already working to show up for Indy by building community with other independent businesses. The Windsor Park gift shop Stomping Ground became his first wholesale relationship, followed by The Clubhouse, an outpost of Pots & Pans Pie Co. along the Monon Trail. Then in November, he created a special roast with Fletcher Place florist Flower Boys.
Farm to cup
Daniel sees coffee as an ecosystem of relationships between farmers, producers and the people who enjoy the coffee.
That’s why he started working with a family-run coffee supplier called Quetzal. Founder Fabiola Aguilera has family in Guatemala who farm the coffee. She and her husband transport it back to Indiana. They reached out to Daniel in their search for an Indy-based roaster.
Quetzal’s mission is to empower Guatemalan farmers and Indigenous communities, and to honor their family legacy. The farmers use ancient farming practices and have a long history of activism to preserve land and water from foreign mining interests.
“It’s not just a commodity. Coffee is inseparable from the land, from the people, and there’s a responsibility to protect both,” Aguilera said.
That ethos deeply resonates with Daniel.
“The goal for Civic Coast Coffee has always been to build a relationship with the farmer and or producer: to go to the source of where my coffee is grown, and build that relationship with them,” he said.
Daniel and Aguilera see the coffee experience as a conversation between countries and legacies. Together, they hosted Civic Coast Coffee’s first gathering in the garage in February. A group of ten people gathered around a table in the center of the garage sipping coffee and guessing tasting notes as Aguilera described the origin and history of the coffees they were experiencing, and Daniel shared insight about different roasting processes.
Daniel’s plan is to open up the space for retail hours in the near future so that it can become a place for folks to experience coffee in an intimate setting.
He describes his vision as a place “where I serve high end coffee with an intentional effort to welcome people who look like me to come in. Not a coffee shop, but an experience that makes people feel like they belong,” he said.
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Nicole Nimri is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can reach her at nicolenimri30@gmail.com.
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