Wild Coffee Roasters is introducing new brews into their shop, but this time it’s not just coffee – liquor has now entered the establishment. 

“My original dream, when I was like 19, was to have a place open 24/7,” said Misty Kearns, one of the owners of Wild Coffee. “Then I realized that wasn’t sustainable here, so I had to reel it back in, but now we’re testing out later times.”

The extended hours and offerings further Kearns’ dream to be  a place for the community to gather and support each other. 

“A lot of people, around 5 p.m., don’t want to come and have a coffee because they’ve got to go to bed soon,” Kearns said. “We still want to be open for people to come by after work or for catching up with a friend, so we’re introducing alcohol to our menus.”

The Silt location will stay open until 7 p.m., beginning on Sept. 21. 

“The point of this menu isn’t to be another place where you can just order a Jack and Coke,” said Andrew Meador, co-owner of Wild Coffee. “We’re bringing in different types of beer from all over the world and rotating them out so every time someone comes in, they can get something different.”

Kearns said that Wild Coffee is a family friendly place and might limit people to two alcoholic drinks a night. 

“We’re not sure about that yet, but we want people to enjoy the drinks that are being made,” Kearns said. “We make our coffee with foam art and we want our cocktails and mocktails to bring that same experience.”

Coffee shops have had a foothold in communities long before now, especially in Europe, which were frequented regularly, especially by Jewish intellects, like author Franz Kafka, of “The Metamorphosis”, psychologist Sigmund Freud and author Stefan Zweig, who noted in his memoir and famous novel on the Hapsburg Empire, “The World of Yesterday.”

“Our finest place of education for everything new was the coffee house…an institution of a special kind which is not comparable to any other in the world. It is actually a kind of democratic club, accessible to anyone for an inexpensive cup of coffee.”

Coffee houses hosted parties of people from all backgrounds well into the evening and Kearns and Meador hope to do the same.

Craft beer will be available from a selection of Colorado breweries like WeldWorks, Ratio Beerworks and Crooked Stave, though Wild Coffee is hoping to get selections from all over the world. 

2 Towns Ciderhouse will be providing ciders and in about a month, wines will become available. 

“We have a lot of new drink combinations and Misty comes up with all of them,” Meador said. “She’s the brains behind it, she’s really good at knowing what flavors work together.”

One of the mocktails is the Creamy Briarpatch, which starts with an herbal tea with a blackberry and sage base, combined with a blueberry compote, lemon juice, bitters and topped with coconut sugar. 

“I wanted it to kind of be like a smoothie, but more drinkable,” Kearns said. “I’m still perfecting it, but I’ve got about a week.”

Some of the coffee cocktails will include a Spicy Espresso Martini, which is made with a local Woody Creek vodka and Wild’s own espresso, house and seasonal margaritas and a Fruited Mule. 

“We’re not trying to compete with Miner’s Claim or Burning Mountain Pizza and Subs,” Meador said. “We love going to get margaritas at Miner’s Claim and pizza from Burning Mountain.”

“We’re trying to support the people around us,” Kearns added. “We do different things and they do their specialties very well.” 

Part of the reason they’re trying to stay open a little later, Meador said, has to do with the rent they’re paying. 

“When we close earlier, we’re leaving a lot of time in between where we could not only be open to the community and support them, but to support our staff as well,” he said. “It’s a privilege to employ people and if we can stay open and give them more shifts, more hours, then we can support our team too.”

Kearns said that a lot of coffeeshops are staying open later and that the 7 p.m. time for Wild Coffee in Silt is just a tester. 

“We might learn that we need to stay open even later, or only on weekends,” she said. “We want to also try and serve some dinner food items, but we’re not looking to become a sit down place where dinner is served.”

One idea floating around is to have a small glass of beer with an empanada, Kearns said. 

“We’re just testing things out,” she said. “This fall, we won’t be closing at 2 p.m. for our winter hours, like we have before.”

The Glenwood Springs Wild Coffee location won’t have these items available and will continue to close at 2 p.m. However, it will have Wild Coffee’s fall menu, which includes favorites such as pumpkin chai and caramel apple cider, which is made from the local Big B’s apple cider brand out of Hotchkiss and Wild’s in-house caramel syrup. 

“We’re really excited,” Kearns said. “We’re just so excited to have finally gotten here.”