It was a Saturday. The time: 8:30 pm. The venue: Higher Grounds Coffee House. A few people enjoying steaming mugs of coffee, a schoolgirl browsing through the items on display, a gentleman playing the guitar and singing “Stairway to Heaven” For frequent visitors to Higher Grounds, this was a familiar sight.

Higher Grounds Coffee House first opened in June 1996 at the St. Joe village. It was just a matter of four years before the second one (at Northbrook village) started business. A few months ago the third one in downtown Fort Wayne entered the scene. The same warmth and a feeling of “home away from home” also characterize the new one, located at the corner of Wayne and Calhoun streets. The decor is contemporary, the look, elegant. The wooden furniture, the high stools, the comfortable couches, an appealing decor done up in earth tones, the predominant colors being cream, beige and brown, all make for an appealing, comfortable ambiance.

The Calhoun Street coffee shop mostly aims at the businesses in downtown Fort Wayne. It is open Monday to Friday, 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. The others are open seven days a week. At the other two stores, Friday and Saturday evenings are full of activity. Solo musicians come and play, or sometimes a band plays. As owner John Richards says, all music is acoustic. There are solo guitar and sing-along performances, jazz groups playing … all these make for a fun-filled evening.

So what sets Higher Grounds apart? The coffee. The coffee beans are imported from all over the world — Africa, Central and South America, Indonesia and elsewhere. The beans are roasted and flavored at a facility in Fort Wayne and then sold. Higher Grounds has been credited for bringing authentic espresso to Fort Wayne. The coffee is superb, the service splendid. There are almost 60 different coffee flavors to choose from, like cinnamon, French vanilla, hazelnut, etc. Numerous desserts can be enjoyed with your coffee — cheesecakes, pastries, cookies “as big as one’s head” and a lot more. No dearth of options here.

As I sat there enjoying the coffee and the soft lilting music, I noticed that people had started pouring in. They belonged to every age group — teenagers, young adults, some in their thirties and older. There were some in large groups; others were there in twos and threes. A young couple sitting in a cozy corner holding hands, a gentleman working with his laptop, a lady busy reading, everyone was doing his or her own thing. A couple of high school students said that they visit this place almost every weekend, and according to them Higher Grounds is a great hangout. A lady who was there with her four-year-old son, agreed with them. “I don’t do anything while I am here, and that is why I am here. I drink coffee and relax”.