Coffee is taken seriously at Madcap Coffee, the specialty roaster and cafe that became one of the defining institutions of Grand Rapids' post-recession creative economy. Founded in 2008 — at the precise worst moment to start a business — Madcap committed to sourcing, roasting, and serving coffee with the same seriousness that Grand Rapids' craft brewers were bringing to beer. The comparison is not accidental: Grand Rapids in the 2000s developed a kind of artisanal confidence across multiple industries at once, a belief that making something very well, caring about provenance and process, and charging accordingly was a viable economic model for a mid-size Midwestern city.
Madcap now operates multiple locations and is nationally recognized in specialty coffee circles, but this original space — wherever you're standing in the city today — still carries the energy of a project that bet on Grand Rapids when the bet was not obvious. The city has a remarkable concentration of institutions like this: the brewery that became nationally famous, the coffee roaster that became nationally known, the furniture makers who never stopped caring about craft. It adds up to something.