Sometimes, it seems, one makes the best decisions when there’s not much time to think about it.
That was certainly true for Matt Wood, who found himself losing an automotive job about seven years ago – one that he held for 16 years.
“My wife’s like, ‘do something else,’” he recalled last week, “I said, OK, I want to open a coffee shop, so I just started that.”
It’s a people-centered business, whose founder used to love working behind the counter and hearing customers greet him by name.
That is reflected in the people he hires – happy people – because those are the people skills he feels one can’t be taught and is just as welcoming to people who like to work or hold meetings in his shops. So far, the business is making fixtures of some of his regulars.
“We have a lot of people who come in every single day,” Wood said. “We have a guy who’s writing a book who comes in every and just sits at the counter and does his research and writing. That’s what [the shop] is here for.”
It’s a can-do attitude that rhymes with how this small business chain was born and was among those few businesses that enjoyed expansion during the COVID pandemic.
“We opened two shops during the pandemic, in Whitman and Bridgewater,” he said.
Some of that was luck of location as the Better Bean in Bridgewater center had closed, during COVID and never reopened, since Wood had already rented space for his photography studio from the same landlord, on the third floor of the same building, and he called as soon as he heard the Bean was not reopening.
“I told him we need to take the space,” he said. The place needed a lot of work, but he got it done and finds the shop is something of a magnet for the Bridgewater State University community, especially.
He opened his first Restoration Coffee business as a corner counter in the Bostonian Barbershop in Whitman in 2017 and recently opened his latest shop in a new mixed-use apartments and commercial property at 999 Main St., in Hanson. He left the Bostonian during COVID when occupancy regulations would not allow the coffee counter to stay and Hanson embodies the most recent growth.
“I’ve been waiting for a while for this, but I’m glad it’s all done,” he said of the property investment. “Once we got the OK to start putting stuff in here, we were open about two weeks later.”
He had already been accumulating the equipment he needed.
“My whole basement was full of everything,” he said.
The Steve Eagan development replaced the burned-out remains of a former dress shop torched during a string of South Shore arson cases about a decade ago, an abandoned, building where a construction firm used to be and the vacant house where “The Whole Scoop” ice cream parlor had also been located at 965 Main St..
The coffee shop business is not Wood’s first career change.
He had also been a wedding photographer for six years and one point.
“I was always meeting with customers in coffee shops,” he said. “I always like that whole vibe. It’s kind of like that ‘Cheers’ thing with ‘everybody knows your name,’ and they come in every day.”
Wood still owns locations on Route 18 in East Bridgewater, the Bridgewater common area and Whitman center.
East Bridgewater was his first stand-alone location, which he had converted from a garage of a house where a beauty shop is located.
It took a little while to get the Whitman location, he said.
“The owner of that, who also owns this, would come into the East Bridgewater shop during COVID, telling me ‘I’ve got a spot for you, I’ve got a spot for you.’” Wood recalled. But at the time, he wasn’t ready for that leap and he had been trying to get a spot in Hanson in the plaza where Shaw’s is located. A non-competition clause in the plaza owner’s agreement with Shaw’s, which also sells baked goods, ended that quest.
“I called Steve and said, ‘Let’s just do it,’” he said.
It was the first location he’s moved into that didn’t require work on an older building, such as straightening walls, and the apartments on the upper floors were already rented out.
Egan is building another similar business at 965 Main St.
“I’m glad that Steve built this,” Wood said. “The place looks beautiful and he did such a good job.”
Wood said there were Hanson residents who were upset about losing the house where The Whole Scoop had been, but noted there were no takers even after Eagan offered the house free of cost to anyone who wanted to move it.
“The people that owned the house were going to do something like this,” he added. “They were going to knock it down.”
Eagan has built a similar project in Whitman center, where Supreme Pizza, Whitman Wellness Center and John Russell Studio have moved to.
When Wood started his business, it was just coffee, and finding a name was the first order of business.
“It’s wild, trying to figure out business names,” he said. “Every single name’s been taken.”
He hit on Restoration Coffee because it’s a beverage that restores you.
“Coffee brings you back to life, but also both the Whitman and Bridgewater shops both needed full rehabs before you could do anything – like a full restoration.”
When they added a menu, they started out easy with toasts and simple fare, and chicken salad sandwiches adding what they’ve wanted to the menu as they go along.
Much of that took place during the pandemic when business was slow.
“We were all very tight and [at times] were just hanging around for hours, waiting for people to come in,” Wood said. “It was so slow, so that was when we ended up kind of experimenting with things, going with cravings and stuff like that.”
One of those sandwiches, the Marley, leads some customers to wonder if there’s “something different” in it, he said with a laugh.
“It’s got [tomato] jam,” he said. “We have a food team now, that makes all the sauces, the tomato jam and things like that.” Most of that, as well as the bean roasting is done out of the Whitman shop at the corner of Washington and Temple streets and distributed to the other locations. The muffins are baked on-premises in each shop.
They buy green coffee beans from Colombia, Ethiopia and Guatemala through a supplier in Rhode Island who, in turn, deals directly with the farmers. Then Restoration roasts their own beans.
At the very beginning we used another roasting company, but before long Wood started roasting his own coffee.
“I watched every YouTube video [on coffee roasting] I could possibly find and read every book I could on roasting,” he said.
The décor is practically identical in each shop, bowing only to differences in the lay of the floor plan. The tables and chairs are something of a logo and he builds all the main counter tops and even paints the sign affixed to the front counter in each shop.
“I’d like to have 10, but that makes it that much more of a headache,” he said of his ultimate goal for the business, he said, adding it is “just a number at this point.
Stay tuned.
