We met while working at a coffee shop in the late 90’s and bonded over an affinity for single origin coffees. A few years later, after many trips together and a few years apart, we got married. A couple years after on a week long trip called Cycle Oregon (think 2000 people in lycra, a traveling tent village, riding bikes all day with great food, coffee, beer and wine and an incredible sense of community and accomplishment), the idea of Breakaway was born. Fast forward a few years, a couple kids and a bunch of pets later, we relocated to North Carolina and eventually settled in to Briar Chapel. “Wow this neighborhood would be great if there was good coffee and someplace to get food” came up a lot and so we pulled the trigger and opened the original Breakaway in the Fall of 2016. The road riding in Chatham was great and Briar Chapel had a great and growing trail network. We built Breakaway on the premise of “Great Food, Great Drinks and Great People”, inspired by Cycle Oregon, and it’s been incredibly gratifying to have people tell us that Breakaway has become their “3rd Place” (home and work being 1st and 2nd).
A few more years, after driving down North Greensboro St. in Carrboro and spotting a new building that looked right for another Breakaway and drawn to the area because of it’s similarity to where we both grew up (walkable community with values that we share), we opened Breakaway Carrboro with the intension of spreading our belief in “Great Food, Great Drinks and Great People.”
The rest is history …(yet to be written?).
