Brown Bee Coffee will soon open a second location at the corner of Waterman and Brook streets. The new cafe, which will be located on the first floor of The Carlyle apartment building, is intended to have a similar atmosphere and menu to the original space, but with a smaller space and a takeout window, according to Anjolina Huang, a manager at the Brown Bee Coffee location on Benefit Street.
While an official opening date has not been announced, Huang said she hopes that the cafe will be up and running by early next year at the latest.
Brown Bee — which opened its original College Hill location on Benefit Street in 2024 — decided to add a second cafe after seeing consistent demand from Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students, she said.
Huang said Brown Bee considered proximity to Brown’s campus when deciding on a new location. The Benefit Street location is “quite a trek for the Brown students,” she said.
The second location has been in the works for at least a year and a half, according to Huang. It will serve the same drinks as the Benefit Street location, Huang said, and initially a smaller selection of pastries will be available before the menu is expanded when the cafe is more settled.
The Carlyle location will also have a “similar aesthetic” to the Benefit Street location, but will be slightly smaller, Huang said. “It will be honestly even more cozy,” she said, and “a little more intimate.”
Chloe Cho ’29 appreciates Brown Bee’s “homey” vibe. “I’d be willing to visit the new one,” she said, “especially if that means that there’d be less traffic.”
Cho said that the cafe’s policy of not allowing laptop use on the weekends would be “a good thing to change” in the new location to give students more places to study.
Huang said she thinks that the laptop policy will likely remain the same in the new location. “We just prefer people to kind of build more community and not be so focused on work on the weekends,” she said.
Tracy Kelleher, property manager for Walter Bronhard Realty, which owns The Carlyle, said the space previously served as a lobby for the apartment building, with offices for two real estate agents.
“When Brown Bee offered to come in, we thought … our tenants might enjoy that,” she said.
Karen McAninch ’74, a retired Brown employee, stops by Brown Bee about once a month during her bike rides.
“It’s very specialized, but … they really do what they do well,” McAninch said.
Amit Patel, a Providence resident who visits Brown Bee often, said he was excited about the new location. But he will likely remain a regular at the original location, where he typically orders a specialty croissant and a latte, since he lives nearby.
The Benefit Street location has been “flooded” with Brown and RISD students, Huang said. She said she thinks that having a location closer to campus might help even out crowds.
“At the end of the day, it’s still us,” Huang said.
