Two Biggby Coffee locations in the Milwaukee area closed their doors suddenly on Monday, March 9.
The Biggby Coffee at Red Arrow Park, 920 N. Water St., and in Franklin, at 7700 S. Lovers Lane Road #100, both announced closures over social media the night of Sunday, March 8.
Neither announcement included details about why the locations were closing. The stores didn’t immediately respond to questions.
A Facebook post announcing the Red Arrow Park’s shop closure described the location as “truly a part of the downtown community.”
“Without a drive-thru, it became a place where people slowed down, gathered, studied, worked, met friends, and shared conversations over coffee,” the Red Arrow Park Biggby Coffee’s post said. “To everyone who stopped in, whether it was part of your morning routine, a place to meet friends, or a quiet spot to sit for a while, thank you. Your support and the connections built within these walls meant more to us than we could ever fully express.”
The Franklin location’s Facebook announcement called it “so much more than a place to grab coffee.”
“It was a place where mornings started, where familiar faces came through the drive-thru every day, where conversations were shared, and where a community was built one cup at a time,” the post said.
Milwaukee friends and business partners Keith Washington and Curtis Grace opened the Franklin Biggby Coffee in 2021. It was the Michigan-based chain’s first Milwaukee-area location.
They then opened the Biggby Coffee at Red Arrow Park in 2024, in the café space that previously held a Starbucks for nearly 20 years. The business partners had planned to open another Biggby Coffee in Cudahy, but that project never came to fruition.
The closures of the two Biggby Coffee locations come as the City of Milwaukee discusses a redesign of Red Arrow Park, which may include replacing the skating rink with a skating ribbon.
Other suburban Milwaukee Biggby Coffee locations remain open in the Meijer store in Wauwatosa and in Waukesha.
Contact Kelli Arseneau at (920) 213-3721 or karseneau@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @ArseneauKelli.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Two Biggby Coffee locations in Milwaukee area close suddenly
Reporting by Kelli Arseneau, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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