A new coffee shop, Café 1517, can be found in Brantford’s north end, located alongside Reformed Book Services.
Café 1517 has been open since fall 2024, serving Brazilian Canadian Coffee Company drinks, soups from Burnt Tongue, and pastries from the Tiny Shop Bakery. It’s owned by Reformed Book Services next door, a Christian bookstore.
Jennifer de Blieck, manager of the bookstore, said the café came about as a desire to provide people who were visiting the bookstore with a place to sit down while they were there. “Kind of in the style of Indigo,” de Blieck said, “Bookstores and cafés go together really well.”
The café’s name is a reference to 1517 as the year of start of the Protestant Reformation. Though Reformed Book Service’s overarching mission includes the distribution of Puritan and Reformed literature, de Blieck said that “you don’t need to be a regular customer of the bookstore or a Christian to come into the café. It’s meant to serve the community.”
For the café, de Blieck said, “we want to be a place where people feel safe and welcome, and that they feel the warmth and the energy of what we’re doing here.”
They offer to-go and dine-in options, with seating options that include a study area in the back. They also plan to expand their event offerings, including craft nights and trivia nights.
Bianca Kleinjan, café supervisor, has been involved with the project since the early stages and officially came on as supervisor in August.
“It’s just really exciting to see it come to life,” Kleinjan said. “A lot of it was, you know, all these plans on paper, but to see… the renovation process, and to see it fully turn into a café, and then for people to come in and enjoy it and to see the vision, that’s just been really exciting.”
Kleinjan said they’ve had a lot of regulars so far and are forming connections with people, which is “encouraging to see.”
When they were preparing to open, Kleinjan said she was surprised by the lack of cafés in Brantford.
“There’s just Starbucks, Tim Hortons kind of in this area, and Williams…. it kind of surprised me that there’s nothing in this section,” Kleinjan said. “But a lot of people told me that Brantford people support other Brantford businesses, and they’re very eager to support local. And we’ve found that to be true.”
