Enderly Coffee Co.’s newest brick-and-mortar store at 2620 Tuckaseegee Road in the Enderly Park neighborhood is a bright and cheery beacon, heralding itself with bright yellow patio furniture. Sitting just beyond FreeMoreWest hotspots like Pinky’s Westside Grill and Rhino Market, the new addition to the neighborhood makes a statement. Inside, the bright feel is followed through with reclaimed wood, walls decorated with local art, and a kids’ play coffee bar built by a high school refugee group at Project 658. But it’s not just the new space that makes this Charlotte business such a big deal. It’s Enderly’s commitment to its community that brings that beating heart into a corporate space.
Owners Becky and Tony Santoro fell in love over coffee, so it only makes sense their business would grow from there. At Michigan State, while volunteering through a nonprofit organization on campus Tony would drop in when he knew Becky was working at the coffee shop. When the two foster parents moved to Enderly Park in 2007, they kept seeing their young adult neighbors graduate — or not graduate — from high school without a clear direction and the two Charlotte-Mecklenburg School teachers felt this opportunity gap couldn’t go unanswered.
Their answer was coffee.
Enderly Coffee started creating jobs, and as it did, it stayed firm to its guiding ethos of strengthening “our community by forging meaningful relationships in our neighborhood and throughout our city.” They seek to encourage and inspire. And they do it in practical ways, roasting beans since 2012 and opening this Tuckaseegee Road location in July of this year. Over the next year, expect to see small-batch roasting happening here on and the expansion of the food menu. As they say, “Life is too short for bad coffee.”
NOW IN ‘SOFT’ OPENING
TUESDAY-SATURDAY
7AM-2PM
2620 Tuckaseegee Rd
Photo by Cody Hughes @clhughes21
