DELAWARE — Clearly, people couldn’t wait any longer for Delaware to get a 7 Brew Coffee stand.
Dozens of cars wrapped around the 1424 Sunbury Road location seemingly the moment the viral coffee chain kicked off its grand opening on Monday.
The Delaware Area Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to welcome the new business to town, and 7 Brew’s director of operations Derek Stevens said it was one of the best ribbon-cutting ceremonies the business has ever had.
“As a brand, we’re all about cultivating kindness, being fast, having lots of options for our customers — that’s who we are,” Stevens said. “We want to be like the local coffee house that’s well supported.”
He isn’t kidding about the business having lots of options or being quick — with eight different menu categories and at least six ways to customize over 40 different drinks, 7 Brew has built its brand on customization.
In fact, the Chamber said since 7 Brew’s beginning in 2017, they have grown to nearly 800 locations and created more than 20,000 drink combinations.
Stevens said the brand has received a lot of success from customers creating new concoctions, posting them to TikTok and then going viral.
Several employees man up to three drive-thru lanes and even more pour iced coffees, energy drinks, fizz sodas, smoothies and more inside the stand. In total, the Delaware store employs more than 90 people all aged 16 to 23, Stevens said.
“When you go to almost any quick service restaurant (QSR) nowadays, you’re at a screen. Our team of baristas are outside with tablets having face-to-face interactions,” Stevens said.
“For us, when we’re talking about cultivating kindness, that’s what we’re talking about. We have a human interaction and we’re bringing that back to the QSR industry. Most brands tend to want to go away from that, we want to go into that.”
The community behind the coffee
The Columbus area has hosted four 7 Brew locations for a while now, and Stevens said that definitely helped the Delaware launch.
“The community has been anticipating our arrival since we put the signs up saying we were building,” he said. “Since we’ve been open today, we’ve seen a lot of people come through, they’re excited and all week we’re doing our community hours.”
From June 22 to 26, 7 Brew is giving away free small drinks during their community hours from 8-9 a.m., 12-1 p.m. and 5-6 p.m.
“The community hours will then culminate with Saturday which is our swag day,” Stevens said. “You can buy a large drink and get a 7 Brew t-shirt — three different colors, three different styles, lots of fun.”
Stevens said this is just the brand’s way of giving back to the entire community after several businesses came over to welcome them or brought food for the employees during training.
“It feels like when you move into a neighborhood and people are stopping by to welcome you to the neighborhood and bring casseroles to just introduce themselves — we’ve seen so much of that beyond the customers coming through,” Stevens said.
Guiding the new location
Stevens said 7 Brew as a company is young and energetic, and the Delaware stand’s new leader fits that mold perfectly.
Casey McFarland is a 19-year-old from Westerville studying business at The Ohio State University’s Newark campus. She is the one handling the behind-the-scenes, managerial tasks at the new coffee shop.
“I’m ordering the truck, holding people accountable, making schedules and am in the process of finding my shift supervisors who are on the floor doing a lot of the work, I’m very grateful for them,” McFarland said.
She got started at Newark’s location as a barista, quickly became a shift lead and then transferred to the North High Street location in downtown Columbus for four months.
“I really enjoy my job and told myself this is something I wanted to do, so I expressed my interest in moving up with the company and quickly got this position,” she said.
“I got really lucky with the team. When I was hiring, my biggest thing was creating a positive community. I want people to come to work, enjoy their job, have fun to an extent because its still a job, but it’s not just about the coffee it’s about the experience as well.”
Most importantly, McFarland said she also wants that sense of community to spread to the store’s customers by greeting everyone with a smile and making 7 Brew a place they want to come back to.
And if someone isn’t sure how to tackle 7 Brew’s many options, McFarland shared her personal favorite orders.
“My order is a TikTok order actually, because before this I wasn’t a big coffee drinker, I wasn’t an energy drinker — I was more of a smoothie girl,” she said.
“But working here, I had to like something, not just smoothies. I like a blue raspberry, kiwi and watermelon energy and its supposed to taste like a blue jolly rancher.
“For coffee, I do an iced blondie with cookie butter and extra toasted marshmallow.”
