‘Brewing soon’: Elk Grove Village lands one of first Dutch Bros Coffee shops in the suburbs
Dutch Bros Coffee — the drive-through West Coast chain popular with young people — will open one of its first Chicago-area locations in Elk Grove Village, Mayor Craig Johnson said Thursday.
The coffee shop will be built on one of two retail outlots on the northwest corner of Meacham and Biesterfield roads as part of Nicholas & Associates Inc. and subsidiary Wingspan Development Group’s ice rink redevelopment project.
Dutch Bros will be in front of the new 72,560-square-foot, twin-sheet indoor ice arena along Biesterfield.
The other retail outlot, along Meacham, will be home to a new Culver’s, the Wisconsin-based butterburger and frozen custard chain, according to Johnson.
On a separate parcel at the corner is an existing Burger King.
The mayor made the announcement during his annual state of the village address Thursday afternoon at Belvedere Banquets.
“Young people love Dutch Brothers. They’re brewing soon,” said Johnson, specifically noting a fall 2026 opening along with Culver’s.
“This will be a driving reason to get people to this area of the village. For the longest time, the west side of our community has been asking for a coffee shop,” Johnson continued. “Dutch Brothers is the new hot thing out there. They’re making inroads in the Midwest.”
The coffee chain, founded in 1992 by brothers Dane and Travis Boersma in Grants Pass, Oregon, now has more than 1,000 locations and has been expanding eastward.
Its first Illinois location, in downstate Edwardsville, opened last year. Other shops subsequently opened in Fairview Heights, Mount Vernon and Urbana.
Locations are on tap in Melrose Park and Bloomington, according to the company’s job openings website that seeks to employ “broistas” for the new shops.
In Elk Grove, Dutch Bros and Culver’s will ink leases with Nicholas/Wingspan, which bought the properties from the village for $1 each last year.
The much bigger transaction was the village’s $4.5 million sale of the 9.7-acre site on which the ice rink is now being built. The village purchased the property for the same amount from four limited liability companies that long controlled the site.
Under a redevelopment agreement inked last November, the municipality is giving Nicholas/Wingspan a $27 million zero-interest loan to help pay for construction. The developer has 20 years to pay it back.
Johnson has said such a public-private partnership was necessary to kick-start the project, with the hope of future sales tax proceeds generated by the redevelopment.
Construction on the rink, which will provide ice time for a number of suburban youth hockey groups, started last August and is scheduled to be complete this August.