Though the restaurant won’t open until late 2020, visitors to the new Six Shooter coffee shop will get a taste of the Tex-Mex flavor via the décor. Jen Donatelli

Though the restaurant won’t open until late 2020, visitors to the new Six Shooter coffee shop will get a taste of the Tex-Mex flavor via the décor. Jen Donatelli

When a car crashed headlong into Six Shooter Coffee in late November, owner Peter Brown had no idea that he’d soon be undergoing a crash course in opening a restaurant.

On Feb. 1, Six Shooter Coffee will open in a new space on Waterloo Road (less than a mile from its current location in Collinwood). The coffee shop’s move has been in the works since 2019, but the accompanying Tex-Mex restaurant concept is freshly brewed—having come to fruition just a few weeks ago.

“We realized that there was another 1,000 square feet [of vacant space] connected to the café,” explains Brown. “A new food option is one of the main things people want to see on Waterloo, so we decided it would be pretty sweet to build a kitchen and get something going over there.”

Though the restaurant won’t open until late 2020, visitors to the new Six Shooter coffee shop will get a taste of the Tex-Mex flavor via the décor.The Tex-Mex concept dovetails nicely with Six Shooter’s Western-inspired branding. The initial idea to pay homage to the Wild West stemmed from Brown’s family heritage—his great-grandfather Fred Brown was a cowboy in the Dakotas, and Brown’s mom’s family hails from Texas originally. And the name of the business follows suit: “When people visited Lyndon B. Johnson's ranch in Texas, it was said that the coffee was so strong, it could float a revolver," Brown says. "That’s how we came up with the name Six Shooter Coffee."

Though the restaurant won’t open until late 2020, visitors to the new Six Shooter coffee shop will get a taste of the Tex-Mex flavor via the décor. Whimsical wallpaper designed by okPANTS adorns one wall, while a seven-foot cactus plant rounds out the ample greenery. okPANTS is also creating a mural inside the coffee shop space, flanked by a gallery wall featuring local photography and art curated by Maria Neil.

Brown hasn’t yet identified a chef for the project, but he’s already hard at work dreaming up the menu, which he says will include nonalcoholic Mexican cocktails and dishes like huevos rancheros, vegan buffalo chicken dip, cauliflower grits, Texas toast, and chocolate chipotle chili with cornbread.

But first things first—Brown is eagerly anticipating the new Six Shooter space as the Feb. 1 opening date nears. With double the space and a new look, Brown believes Six Shooter Coffee can truly flourish.

“We’ve had the awesome fortune of outgrowing our space,” says Brown. “After traveling to other cities, I’ve always felt that the atmosphere and presentation of our product [in the current shop] didn’t really match what we can do. I wanted to bring our floor plan, atmosphere, and environment up to a level that reaches the quality of our product, and we’re finally able to execute that.”

We’ll tip a cowboy hat to that.