One of the few businesses that sells coffee in Rose Park is planning to open a brick-and-mortar cafe in downtown Salt Lake City.
West-side coffee drinkers, though, can rest assured that Buzzed Coffee Truck isn’t forgetting its roots.
A familiar sight most mornings at 1000 North and Victoria Way, Buzzed Coffee Truck is the closest thing to a coffee shop within Rose Park’s boundaries. (Culture Coffee is relatively close by, at 900 West and 300 North, it’s technically in the Fairpark neighborhood, south of Rose Park.)
“A majority of our business is from regulars in the neighborhood, so much so that we remember most people’s names and orders at this point,” said Dominic Oliver, owner and operator of Buzzed Coffee, whose mobile operation is housed inside a vintage FedEx truck.
At the end of December, Buzzed Coffee announced in an Instagram post that it had signed a lease for a commercial space on the ground floor of The Aster, an affordable apartment complex at 265 S. State St.
Oliver told The Salt Lake Tribune that he will “absolutely” keep the 25-year-old coffee truck in Rose Park even as the shop on State Street — tentatively called Buzzed Cafe — opens its doors in the spring.
“Our thought process is: As long as the cafe does decently enough, we can keep the truck afloat, buy the parts it needs, and keep it out in Rose Park,” Oliver said.
Rose Park is “definitely Buzzed’s home and where it comes from,” he said. “So we’re definitely not going to leave those people high and dry.”
‘Another good central spot’
Before making the announcement about opening a brick-and-mortar spot downtown, Buzzed Coffee had actually been looking for a location in which to open a cafe on Salt Lake City’s west side, Oliver said. However, he was having trouble finding a workable spot with a good amount of foot traffic.
Management at The Aster reached out to Oliver and asked if he’d be interested in leasing one of the commercial spaces on the ground floor of the apartment complex. The offer “honestly kind of came out of nowhere,” after one of Buzzed Coffee Truck’s regulars recommended them to The Aster, he said.
Buzzed Coffee went back and forth with The Aster for a couple of months, as Oliver and his team made sure it was a place they wanted to be. As a mainstay at the Downtown Farmers Market at Pioneer Park, Buzzed Coffee didn’t want to be far from its customer base. “We didn’t want to push too far south or too far east from where we normally operate,” Oliver said.
Now, the lease is signed, and Buzzed Coffee is in the process of getting its building permits. Requests for comment from management at The Aster were not answered.
Buzzed Cafe will be located in the walkable paseo between The Aster’s two residential towers, connecting State Street and Floral Street. If visitors enter the midblock walkway from State Street, Buzzed Cafe will be on their right, in the complex’s south tower at 265 S. State St.
Inside, patrons will be able to order pastries from a rotating list of local bakeries, hot paninis and, of course, Buzzed coffee, which is made with high-quality beans that are roasted fresh locally by Rimini. Oliver also said he hopes to have gelato available, so he can do affogato — vanilla gelato with two shots of espresso poured over the top — and gelato sundaes, a nod to his Italian-American upbringing.
With about 30 seats in the cafe, including a bar along the window, there will be room to enjoy a cup of coffee and get some work done, Oliver said.
In addition to Buzzed Cafe, the Cramer House — part of The Aster complex — is slated to be the location of two new bar concepts from the folks behind Water Witch, Bar Nohm and Remora.
Sean Neves, an owner of those three bars, said the historic building at 241 S. Floral Ave. will house both concepts: a bar, also called Cramer House, will occupy the main level, and a cocktail parlor called Florist will be on the second level. The name will play on the building’s history as a flower shop, Neves said. Both bars are scheduled to open by the summer.
“The idea is, we can turn that whole little area into another good central spot for people downtown, since it’s growing so fast and there’s so many people moving in,” Oliver said.
Buzzed Coffee’s beginnings
Ever since Buzzed Coffee was founded in 2016 by Trina Perez, Buzzed Coffee Truck has been a staple in Rose Park. She told The Tribune in 2022 that she started the mobile coffee operation because she couldn’t get a decent cup of coffee in the neighborhood, and neither could her neighbors.
In 2021, Perez sold the truck to Dominic Oliver and Sierra Hibl (who is no longer part of Buzzed Coffee), so she could spend more time with her young son. Oliver and Hibl did several renovations on the truck and reopened for Valentine’s Day 2022.
Perez created the recipes for some of the specialty drinks that Buzzed Coffee is now known for, including the Purple Haze (a blend of white chocolate and lavender) and the Mexican mocha, made with cayenne and cinnamon.
Other drinks that are popular with Buzzed Coffee Truck’s customers include the spiced brown sugar latte (made with cardamom and clove) and the cafe con miel, which is Oliver’s spin on a traditional Mexican coffee preparation. The drink features honey, lavender syrup and cinnamon.
