Roasted In The Village
Roasted in the Village is a familiar sight to those who frequent downtown Zionsville for the local shops, the farmers market or baseball games in Lions Park. Co-owner Sara Prust was born and raised in Zionsville. After spending several years on the West Coast, she’s excited to be back in her hometown and trying her hand at the coffee shop business.
“This community is amazing and the location is key. We wouldn’t have bought a shop anywhere else,” Prust says. “The building used to be a toy store. It’s a little Hallmark town. I don’t know how they haven’t made a movie here yet.”
She studied hospitality and management at Purdue University. After graduation, she lived in Oregon and then California, doing everything from hospitality, events and catering to getting into the luxury wine business.
“Wine and coffee have a lot of overlap,” she explains. Prust took a Level 1 sommelier course at Purdue and learned everything she knows about coffee from working at Greyhouse Coffee near campus.
“We like to say that there’s nothing we haven’t done before,” she says.
Her partner, Tai Loporto, also has a background in hospitality and together they have experience in many lines of business.
She and Loporto were visiting family last year when they decided to look into purchasing the shop from the previous owner, who was a family friend.
“I’ve known the previous owner, Amy, since I was a little girl, and I used to come to this place when I was in college. She’d lived her dream of owning a coffee shop and was ready to move on,” Prust says.
The whole team stayed on, with a few additional new hires, and Prust couldn’t be more grateful for them.
“They’ve been amazing and rolled with the punches,” she says. “They love serving the community. We can get really busy on certain days, like during the farmers market, but people are kind and understanding when we let them know it might be a little bit of a wait. They just appreciate that communication.
“The team has trusted us fully. I had to learn that everyone comes from a different background. Communication is always the key to making things work,” she adds.
Prust’s taking over the shop was a “baptism by fire,” as she describes it. They bought the business in September during the annual Fall Festival, and while it was a learning curve, they’re figuring it out.
Her favorite thing has been getting to know the community on a personal level. She says that she meets the most new people on Saturdays but enjoys the routine with regulars during the weekdays.
“It’s that Monday to Friday where you have those consistent folks,” she says. “It’s awesome to see how they support each other as a community. You become part of their lives as a third space. It’s super special to me. I’ve known all along that that’s what I wanted this space to be. My guiding light that we make all our decisions around is asking, how do we better serve the community?”
For Prust, that starts with great service and making sure they offer the best possible product they can.
“We switched over to PT’s Coffee, which is what Greyhouse Coffee uses. I have a huge respect for them because their biggest focus is sourcing the coffee responsibly. Going to the farms, seeing how they do it, making sure that everyone on that farm is treated and paid well in good conditions. Of course when the coffee gets over here, they make sure that it’s roasted beautifully,” she says.
In addition to changing up the beans they use, Prust and her partner have also been experimenting with making their own syrups for lattes and other drinks.
“The super fun thing for me has been making our own syrups. Not everything is house-made right now, but we just rolled out our spring menu with four brand-new house-made syrups. Our maple brown sugar is our best seller, even above vanilla,” she says.
“We’ve accidentally created a cult following around our orange cardamom, which was the first syrup that we made,” she adds. “It was just a recipe we tested out in our own kitchen. I made this spicy cinnamon cardamom syrup and Tai thought I needed to add something else, like a citrus flavor. We didn’t have any lemons but had an orange on hand and added that instead. The recipe hasn’t changed. It was like liquid gold, and we started selling that in little 8-ounce jars so that you can take it home.”
The seasonal offerings for spring are cherry vanilla, blueberry lemon, cookie butter and olive oil cake. Prust wants them to rotate quarterly, with things like ginger molasses for winter and the famous pumpkin spice that has people lining up out the door during the autumn months.
“Our neighbors are Zionsville Olive Oil. I wanted to partner with them, so when I was coming up with flavors, I thought of the traditional Spanish olive oil cake. It has orange peel, almond extract, sugar and olive oil. When it emulsifies, it’s really cool. I like to push the boundaries and be creative,” she explains.
Prust plans to continue making small changes for the better and intends to do some remodeling in the future as well, but she doesn’t want customers to worry that their beloved shop is disappearing.
“We do have a rebrand and renovations planned, but that will be sometime in the future. It will be about asking ourselves how we can make the space even better, how we can better serve the community, because it deserves the world,” she says.
She has loved getting to pursue her passions of hospitality, coffee and creativity while being back in her hometown.
“Rarely do I have a negative interaction,” she adds. “It’s coffee at the end of the day, it’s not the end of the world, but you have the power to brighten those little moments. You start to understand that you are more involved in people’s lives than you realize, and you can change someone’s day with those interactions.”
Roasted in the Village is located at 27 E. Pine St., Zionsville. It’s open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends. For more information, call 317-344-2181 or visit roastedinthevillage.com.
