One the city's newest business ventures opens Friday in one of the oldest buildings in Wichita Falls.
Hook & Ladder Coffees & Winery, owned by Jon and Pam Reese and Bill and Lauri Weske, occupies 616 Seventh Street, which was built in 1884. Over the years, the building was home to a variety of businesses including saloons, a meat market, a grocery, packing house and lounges.
New business opens in historic building with coffee and wine. Torin Halsey
Today, the beautifully-renovated space has already earned a restoration award from the Wichita County Heritage Society and is on the registry of official local landmarks.
Bill, a retired assistant fire chief and Jon, current fire chief for the Wichita Falls Fire Department, began roasting coffees a few years ago and started their first business together in early 2017. They currently offer ten artisanal, fire-roasted coffee varieties.
Bill explains the transition to include an urban winery in the business model was born from the success they were seeing in the growth of downtown Wichita Falls. "He (Jon) has had a passion for Downtown for a long time and we started looking around and realizing that Downtown was starting to really take off. We stumbled upon this building and talked to the owner and purchased it and thought, we can't just have a coffee roastery here, and Jon came up with the idea, "What about wine?"
Touting it as the first urban winery in Wichita Falls, they have their own label of wines through partnering with a couple of Texas vineyards and have a few from California, offering more than 20 to choose from.
Artisan flat breads and meet and cheese boards will also be available.
With more than 66 years of service in firefighting between them, their establishment features a number of historic black-and-white photographs of fires and early fire equipment in the decor. A warm ambiance fills the room with a pressed tin ceiling, tasteful furniture and lighting and plenty of areas of exposed brick in the old building's walls.
Weske wants to be clear though, that the business is a coffee roastery that sells bags of custom, fire-roasted coffee, not a coffee shop. Hook & Ladder Coffee is served at 8th Street Coffee House, a block over, and at Fox Hill Restaurant.
After months of planning, renovation and hard work, Hook & Ladder will have its grand opening Friday at 11 a.m. and will be open Thursday through Sunday. For more information go to their Facebook page, Hook & Ladder Coffees and Wine Co.