New cafe, general store serves up coffee, array of Georgia food items
A business that blends a variety of coffee beverages with products from across Georgia has opened on the upper level of The Landings with hopes of becoming a regular among customers seeking something tasty and unique.
Wheelys Cafe & General Store at 5592 Whitesville Road, adjacent to Outback Steakhouse, will be holding its grand opening this weekend, said owner Dustin Cooper, who also owns P.V.F. Supply, an industrial supply company in Columbus. He acknowledges being a novice to the coffee and retail food business, but believes it can work.
“It’s surprisingly done well,” he said. “I didn’t think as many people would be buying the food products from us as they do. But we sell a lot of lunches. We do a decent amount at breakfast. And people have found some products in here that they like, and you can’t get them anywhere else unless you drive to Savannah or Sandersville or Macon or wherever the product is located. So they’ll keep coming in to buy them.”
Cooper said Wheelys’ grand opening on Saturday and Sunday will include live music, with customers getting half price off a special drink that they post to a social media site. With Mother’s Day on Sunday, all moms will receive half off their food and beverages that day.
The foundation of sorts for the cafe and general store is the Wheelys coffee cart that Cooper researched online and then purchased from a company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Wheelys is the brand name of the eco-friendly carts, which are solar powered and have running water and heaters to make the coffee that is ground by hand.
Wheelys Cafe & General Store opened quietly a few weeks ago and is starting to build a following as people hear about the business and stop in to check out the products, the owner said. Most are consumable food goods, although the shelves include items such as a line of soaps, sunglasses that float in the water, dog treats and shampoo.
The edibles, of course, draw much of the attention, with the store’s inventory including pimento cheese, cookies, honey, salad dressings, olive oil, pesto, fried pies, jams, jellies, peanut butter, stone-milled grits and the popular Midland Ghost Pepper Sauce, also made in local area. There are about 40 different products on the shelves thus far.
“I just thought it would be neat,” Cooper said of the idea to become a haven for products produced in the Peach State. “My neighbors own Georgia Soap Company, so I thought it would be cool to have their products in there. I had another friend that makes pickles. And I thought why don’t we just do products from all over Georgia, and try to bring in the people from Columbus first, and then go out from there. We’re buying cookies from Savannah. We’ve got pimento cheese from Sandersville, Ga. We’ve got all kinds of products from around Georgia.”
Working to develop his customer base, Cooper said he is considering bringing the coffee cart and other goods to the Market Days on Broadway event on Saturday mornings. He understands the competition he will face from the established coffee shops downtown, thus he would like to set up the cart in areas away from those businesses.
For now, the Columbus resident said he will focus primarily on the retail cafe and general store to make sure it is successful.
“It’s been doing pretty good,” he said of the Whitesville Road location. “There’s a lot of traffic through here, and the other main thing is when people are waiting outside Outback on Friday and Saturday and are just kind of walking around, we’re having a lot of the overflow from there coming in and buying a drink or something. Then they’ll come back a couple of days later when they have more time and maybe get a sandwich or buy some snacks or some jams or jellies or peanut butter.”
This story was originally published May 12, 2017 at 3:45 PM with the headline "New cafe, general store serves up coffee, array of Georgia food items."