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Black & Brew Coffee House & Bistro opened its fourth location at Lakeland Regional Health on Jan. 2.
Cafe hours are 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Sunday, at 1324 Lakeland Hills Blvd. in the Carol Jenkins Barnett Pavilion for Women and Children.
“We’ve envisioned this place that is like an oasis within the hospital,” said Black & Brew founder Chris McArthur, 43.
The menu includes best-sellers from the other cafes, and the 2,600-square-foot location with a big kitchen will allow for a hospital catering operation.
A fourth location
McArthur said when the hospital first reached out to him looking for a private vendor to operate in their existing cafe, he didn’t think he wanted to take on an additional location. But he agreed to tour the space, and “my wheels started turning.”
He talked it over with his wife, Charity. “She was the one to help me to see that this was an opportunity to further our mission of hospitality,” said McArthur. “We could be encountering people on the best day of their life or the worst day of their life … We can be a part of helping people celebrate or helping to comfort people in an unfortunate circumstance.”
The changes they’ve made to the space reflect that mission. “It’s warm and comfortable and inviting and just kind of a retreat,” McArthur said.
Opening the new cafe brings Black & Brew’s total employees to more than 100, said McArthur. “That’s one of the other great benefits of doing this — we’re creating opportunities for our people.”
They were able to promote some employees from within and make new hires. The 30 hospital-location employees trained at the other cafes in order to hit the ground running on day one.
20th anniversary
The first Black & Brew location opened on Feb. 14, 2006, in downtown. McArthur was 23 with no formal training, “and it showed when we started,” he said. “We made so many mistakes.”
He quickly learned lessons about the value of good leadership and business. But he also had a passion for hospitality and connecting with both customers and employees that helped define the business in the early days and kept people coming back.
“If it hadn’t been for our early supporters and for people continuing to be loyal and patronizing our cafes, we wouldn’t exist,” McArthur said.
Before Black & Brew
McArthur was a member of the Marine Corps Reserves while in college. Then in 2003, “I was activated for Operation Iraqi Freedom. I was pulled out of classes at University of Florida to go serve,” McArthur said.
That experience changed his outlook and shaped his future.
“As a 21-year–old kid, essentially, to have such an impactful life experience … set me thinking differently about the value of time and the things I wanted to accomplish with my life.”
“Since then, my whole mission is to just squeeze every drop of juice I can out of the orange.”
After returning from Iraq, McArthur proposed to Charity and bought a house in Lakeland. He got a job at Summit Consulting, where he “got a glimpse of what my life might look like if I continued on that trajectory, and it felt stifling to me,” McArthur said. “I just wanted to be the captain of my own destiny.”
Starting the business
He and his brother, Michael McArthur, decided to partner in a business. “Growing up, Michael and I had always, you know, had these side hustles of trying to earn our own money, whether it was mowing lawns or we did catalog sales from door to door … We did anything we could.”
They both had experience in food service. “We leaned into what we thought were our strengths … and decided we wanted to open a coffee shop.”
McArthur’s first investor was his brother-in-law’s father-in-law, Glenn Leonard, who was excited to support a veteran. “We took that plan to Mr. Leonard, who was the original shareholder, he introduced us to four of his friends, and they put up the money, and we did it.”
Patriot
In 2014, once Black & Brew was established with leadership that McArthur knew he could trust, he started exploring a new venture. He decided to try coffee roasting, creating a product that could enhance the quality of offerings at the cafes and bring something cool to Lakeland that didn’t already exist.
“It’s the artisans that kind of really give a city personality … those bakers, those brewers, you know, and coffee roasters,” McArthur said. “And we didn’t have a coffee roaster yet.”
He took a course in San Francisco, then “came back, bought a little, half-pound electric roaster and started roasting my back porch until I could figure it out,” he said. He built a cart, launched at the farmer’s market in Lakeland in March 2015, and Patriot Craft Coffee was born.
Shaping and being shaped by the city
For McArthur, this is about more than just business; he sees Black & Brew and Patriot as opportunities to give back to the city that made this possible.
“It’s a privilege to own five businesses in Lakeland, to be part of this community and be part of shaping and providing or contributing to the personality of the city,” McArthur said.
He said Black & Brew has partnered with the United Way for close to 15 years with their Pumpkin Latte Giveaway, they also host Santa’s Nice List, benefitting One More Child, and take advantage of other community service opportunities throughout the year. Black & Brew was one of LkldNow’s early sponsors, and McArthur served on the LkldNow board until 2022.
He also sees the businesses shaping the community in other ways. He enjoys mentoring young employees. “That’s really an incredible opportunity to pour into those people, to be a part of setting them up for the next thing,” McArthur said.
Before he founded Sabu and Hakucho, Ryan Neal worked as part of the kitchen staff at Black & Brew. Amanda Rivera started as a barista 18 years ago and is now Black & Brew’s chief operating officer.
Food and drink offerings rotate to keep things fresh for customers, and “Every once in a while, I have a home run,” McArthur said, like the Cereal Milk Latte or Coquito Shaken Espresso that harkens back to McArthur’s Puerto Rican background.
“One that’s stuck around for quite a while now,” McArthur said, “is the Espresso Dolce.” Made with sweetened condensed milk, “It’s very simple, but it’s just got a different kind of a mouth feel … and it’s just kind of super comforting.” They renamed it Jeannie’s Dolce in honor of Jeannie Weaver Lopez, original founder of Revival and The Peach House who died at 39 in November 2024.
Now, “Every year now we bring that back to celebrate her,” McArthur said.
The biggest lesson
Today, said McArthur, “I get to wake up every day and do exactly … what I want to do. And the thing that I love to do.”
Over the years he’s come to recognize the importance of balance. “We have a limited amount of personal resources and if we invest 90% of those in one thing, and your leftovers are given to your kids or to your spouse, that’s a recipe for disaster.”
He thinks of Charity, their daughter, Aribella, 16, and son, Noah, 13. “I get to be at all my kids’ soccer games, you know; I get to make dinner for them every evening.”
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