Blind Tiger Coffee Roasters has opened its ninth Tampa Bay location, adding a café to downtown Tampa’s Rivergate Tower despite already operating another store about three-tenths of a mile away at Tampa City Center.
The Rivergate café serves the company’s full menu of coffee, tea, breakfast sandwiches, açai bowls and lunch items. The short distance between the two stores doesn’t concern Blind Tiger President Roberto Torres.
“There’s just a lot more business on each individual building than trying to call people from other buildings to visit us,” Torres said. “If I have to put one on each one, I don’t mind doing that.”
Customers have already started dividing the cafés into different parts of their week, he said. Some stop at City Center on weekends because it is closer to home, but have told him Rivergate will become their weekday coffee shop once they’re back in the office.
When Torres arrived in Tampa from Panama in 2006, he considered $2.50 expensive for parking downtown. He remembers passing that lot near what is now Amalie Arena, feeding six quarters into a parking meter instead and calling it a bargain. Today, he said, spending about $20 to park downtown has become routine.
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Growing up in Panama City, Torres said, the city’s business center was known as the financial district. He sees Tampa moving in the same direction as law firms, banks, accounting firms and technology companies continue to add offices downtown.
“I want to play where Class A office happens,” Torres said. “That’s the customer who orders catering, hosts meetings and entertains clients.”
Blind Tiger’s downtown business now extends beyond the counter. Torres said companies hire the café for client breakfasts, fundraisers and office events, while others install its commercial espresso systems so employees can make cappuccinos, lattes and macchiatos without leaving the office.
“We don’t need them to come to us,” Torres said. “We can actually bring coffee to them.”
Blind Tiger recently hired two catering sales representatives and a catering sales manager to pursue that work.
The company is also working with organizations including the Tampa Bay Chamber, Tampa Bay Economic Development Council and Tampa Downtown Partnership to introduce employers to its catering, office coffee service and mobile espresso bar offerings.
Torres opened Rivergate before Labor Day to meet office tenants before companies begin planning fall board meetings, client events and catering orders.
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