This SC coffee company is getting big. Now it’s taking over a Five Points institution

Brickhouse Gourmet Coffee & Tea Co. can’t crack Idaho.

The local coffee shop, roastery and distribution operation has found customers in 49 U.S. states, but the Gem State continues to elude them.

“I don’t know what it is, man,” Akera Sellers joked, stepping out from behind the counter at his West Columbia shop to talk about the company’s sudden expansion in 2024 — and the years of hard work and uncertainty that preceded it.

They’ve got enough going on right now. Idaho can wait.

Sellers and his co-owner and wife, Alexis Wright-Sellers, have their coffee and tea distribution business to run in Hartsville, about an hour and a half way from their two Columbia-area coffee shops: the brick-and-mortar Brickhouse that moved into its own space in West Columbia in February and beloved Five Points caffeination station Drip Coffee, which they purchased shortly before finishing their space across the river.

They’ve come a long way from their humble beginnings in the Midlands, posting up at events like West Columbia’s Meeting Street Artisan Market starting about four years ago, getting their product in front of potential customers and, more importantly, ingraining themselves into the community.

“This has been home since Brickhouse started,” Sellers said of the decision to anchor the Brickhouse brand with a shop at 725 Meeting St., just up the road from the market that helped them get going.

“That’s where the foundation really started to build at Brickhouse. We were there every Saturday. And it wasn’t just showing up, introducing the brand, but it was the relationships, connections we were building with our local community here.”

Selling far and wide

The journey to put down more permanent roots in that community has been far from straightforward.

Before setting up shop in South Carolina in 2019 with the roasting and distribution side of the business, Sellers became fascinated by the coffee process while pursuing a graduate degree in finance in New York. Frequenting a Nigerian cafe in Harlem first got him thinking deeper about what goes into crafting a good cup of joe, but it was a trip to Bangalore that truly got him hooked.

“We were out there at a little hole in the wall,” he recalled, adding that the roasting setup at the shop in India looked like “it could have been something he put together in his garage.”

“But he was roasting coffee. Atmosphere was amazing. And I guess that’s where it was like, ‘I really want to learn the science behind coffee.’ I think that’s where the rabbit hole sort of opened up for me.”

Landing in the Midlands was supposed to be a temporary stop before moving on to Atlanta, but the pandemic and “God’s will” had other plans, Sellers said.

It was COVID and the shutdown that followed that forced Brickhouse to invest in selling its coffee far and wide online. That pivot has paid off. While the operation hasn’t yet found a foothold in Idaho, it has grown to employ 14 people in Hartsville, with Alexis running that part of the business.

“We still try to grow with restaurants, cafes that focus more on hospitality lately, so not only hotels but a lot of Airbnbs and stuff like that that’s been popping up,” Sellers said. “So that’s the area that we’ve been pretty much engaged with.”

Shopping around

Establishing a permanent physical home in West Columbia was similarly tumultuous.

In 2022, Brickhouse moved in with Primal Gourmet, two doors down Meeting Street from the location it now occupies. It was a weird setup, with Brickhouse operating out of the small cafe space in front of the large industrial kitchen where Primal produced products for its meal service business. It got weirder still when Primal shuttered two months later.

“It almost felt like it was our own space because we were the only ones there aside from Our Daily Bread,” the bakery that used the back of the space, Sellers said. “It was a great building, nice space, but we could not have personalized it any more than what it was because it wasn’t designed to be a coffee shop.”

A way out appeared last year when a boutique close by moved out of its space. The original hope was to open in the new location by September, but with the opportunity to finally personalize their own space, they took their time, shutting down their West Columbia operation for a few weeks to finish preparations.

The resulting space is spare and inviting, balancing a modern feel with cozy corners.

“The big difference from there to here is we were able to create the atmosphere,” Sellers said. “Really put everything into place how we would like it to be, from the floor to the seating to the artwork on the wall. We wanted to keep everything local, so the paintings on the walls are from a local artist. The furniture that was built was from a local.”

Enhancing a legacy

While the Brickhouse team was hard at work refining the vibe of its West Columbia shop, they had to get their head around maintaining and enhancing a cherished spot in Five Points.

Opened in 2011, Drip Coffee was in many ways a vanguard for the fleet of craft- and community-emphasizing local shops that have proliferated in its wake. It emphasizes the pour-over method, readying each hot cup of coffee individually, and it was slinging nitro cold brew years before it was ever handed out from a Starbucks drive-through.

And as it’s nestled near the University of South Carolina, it’s frequently a point of introduction for college students to the notion of elevated coffee.

Sellers said that’s why they haven’t changed much and don’t plan to.

Drip still uses the same shifting variety of beans from Counter Culture, the Durham, N.C.-based roastery that is one of the biggest names in craft coffee along the East Coast. It still pushes pour-overs, and it still sells records out of its back room.

The changes that have been implemented, Sellers explained, are to augment the atmosphere that the shop has cultivated. The perennially overtaxed wi-fi, long a complaint of Drip regulars, has been upgraded. And the shop has implemented a “Barista Lottery” program, through which employees submit drink recipes, and one is drawn from a hat and offered for a time, allowing sales to dictate whether it’s popular enough to make returns to the menu.

“We’re looking to come up with new, innovative ideas and just keep things interesting,” Sellers said.

“Just continuing that legacy,” he added.

As to taking over Drip while simultaneously readying the shop in West Columbia and continuing to run the Brickhouse distribution business, Sellers said the opportunity was simply too good to pass up.

“Fortunately, Drip has a team there that’s passionate about what they do, being skillful at what they do,” he said. “So it was easy for that transition and to help juggle everything. So it’s not just me, I think collectively as a team that I have, they’re the ones making it possible.”