3600 Midtown Drive, the freshly built home of Tampa Electric, will soon be joined by a new outpost of one of Tampa’s most successful small coffee houses. With a Davis Islands location, along with another in Seminole Heights, DI Coffee Bar will soon join Tampa Electric for its third cafe, making its tried-and-true coffee experience available in Midtown.
“We are going there with our full menu, everything we historically serve,” owner Ramon Perez told What Now on Wednesday. “There will also be some specialty items added, more gluten-free items. Some things for that particular menu.”
Now open at 214 E Davis Blvd for about 12 years, DI Coffee Bar began as a side project for Perez and his wife, who are homebuilders at work on some of the highest-end homes in the area (for example, Perez points out, the home Tom Brady lived in during his time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers).
“We owned the building [on East Davis Boulevard], and I’d been in the restaurant business half my life,” Perez said. “So we said, Let’s do it.”
The coffee shop’s enduring success has been a source of satisfaction and, to a certain extent, surprise, Perez says.
“We have grown leaps and bounds. I would never have thought it would do what it does. It has been exceptionally busy for a few years, and we’ve got a lot of athletes—hockey players, football players, baseball players—visiting us.”
The Davis Islands location also features wine, beer, and very popular live jazz on Friday nights. Like the Seminole Heights location and the upcoming Tampa Electric location, DI Coffee Bar it offers pastries and coffee from the Miami-based roastery Panther Coffee. DI Coffee Bar also features a curated selection of merchandise whose eclecticism leads Perez to compare it to a smaller-scale version of the Cracker Barrel Country Store.
“We’re not like most coffee shops. The way do what we do is pretty unique. There’s a level of design that makes the DI Coffee Bar very attractive. The design, the feel. You walk in the door and it feels comfortable. That’s our hallmark.”
You can keep up with all DI Coffee Bar by following @dicoffeebar on Instagram.
