Coffee: the importer, the roasters, and the rebrands

1991 — present · Bendix Drive, LaSalle Avenue, the Dainty Maid counter

The importer first: South Bend's coffee record begins one step before the cup. Theta Ridge Coffee, a South Bend importer of green coffee, sells unroasted beans to roasters across the United States and into Canada, and about ten micro-roasters in the South Bend, Elkhart, and Goshen area bought from it, in the Tribune's account (Alice Culp, c. 2015). The city's roasting trade, in other words, has a documented wholesaler of its own — the roasters below did not each import alone.

The roasters of record: Bendix Coffee Co. was founded in 2013 by Karen Haun and Jill De Lucia, roasting off Bendix Drive — the street it is named for — on a Diedrich roaster, about 45 pounds on a roasting Wednesday, in the same Tribune account; its house retailer list ran to Jaworski's, the Purple Porch Co-op, the Country Bake Shop, and Chicory Cafe. The Bendix name survives at a Mishawaka register: its current retail listing sits at 13645 McKinley Highway, Mishawaka, and the move across the line is printed plainly, as the boundary rule requires. On LaSalle Avenue, Zen Cafe's owners, Shaun Maeyens and Kristin Brinley, began as wholesale roasters sourcing directly from Central American farmers; in late 2021 the house at 530 East LaSalle Avenue rebranded to Kodachrome Coffee, the transition completing by April 2022, as the Tribune reported on November 26, 2021. And the Dainty Maid's coffee counter of the bakery entry was A Roaster Called Revenant — Tyler Sutch's roastery, brought into the revived Dainty Maid in 2021, roasting off Sample and Carroll streets, with much of the roasting now run by Mo Morris, in the Tribune's account of December 8, 2025. One name is left out of the fragment deliberately: a Java Cafe founding in November 1991 by Todd Rippo rests on house history alone, with the present cafe's own copy ambiguous about its dates and geography; it is carried in this section's note as unresolved, not printed here as fact.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, Alice Culp (c. 2015) — Theta Ridge Coffee, the green-coffee importer and its roaster customers; Bendix Coffee Co., founded 2013 by Karen Haun and Jill De Lucia, the Bendix Drive roasting and the Diedrich roaster.
2. Bendix Coffee Co., house retailer list — Jaworski's, Purple Porch Co-op, Country Bake Shop, Chicory Cafe; the current retail listing at 13645 McKinley Highway, Mishawaka.
3. South Bend Tribune (26 November 2021) — Zen Cafe at 530 East LaSalle Avenue; Shaun Maeyens and Kristin Brinley; the wholesale roasting and direct sourcing; the rebrand to Kodachrome Coffee, completing by April 2022.
4. South Bend Tribune (8 December 2025) — A Roaster Called Revenant: Tyler Sutch; the 2021 move into the Dainty Maid; the Sample and Carroll roastery; Mo Morris.