Hangar 37 owners Chris and Tiffany Rodes with their children Aiden, Asher, Ameira, Avery, Ayla, Sawyer, Sadie and Stetson were joined by other family members, friends, the members of the Claiborne County Chamber of Commerce as they celebrated the grand opening and ribbon cutting of their coffee shop and boutique. (Photos by Jay Compton)

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Hangar 37 Coffee and Boutique held their official grand opening and ribbon cutting last week at their permanent location in the Rockwood Shopping Center in New Tazewell right next door to Advance Auto Parts.

The coffee shop is open Monday and Thursday from  6 a.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. They have a convenient drive-thru and can also take online orders at https://order.dripos.com/Hangar-37-Coffee.

Owners Chris and Tiffany Rodes have been providing Hangar 37 coffee at area events for over a year before finally opening a brick and mortar store.

Chris shared a little bit of their story at the grand opening.

“I was a flight medic and she was a flight nurse, we met over coffee,” he said. “I had met a producer in South America who produced coffee and I thought I knew what good coffee was until I met this gentleman and tried his and it was amazing.”

He said that coffee made by Pepe Jijon actually placed fifth in the World of Coffee two years ago in Athens, Greece. That specialty coffee is available at Hangar 37 in limited supply after the harvest.

“We want to not only be a space here for our local community, but we also want to be a part of that larger community,” Rodes said. “We realize for a cup of coffee, our prices may be a bit higher but we spend a lot more on our coffee. We don’t buy commodity coffee like a lot of place do and we give more money to the farmer.”

After meeting Jijon and trying his coffee that was all hand-picked, wasn’t bitter and didn’t hit your stomach.

“I told him I wanted to sell his coffee in the states someday,’ Rodes said. “We offer his coffees and other small farmers through collectives and things like that.”

He said Tiffany comes up with all of the fancy coffees and flavors as well as most of the baking that is done in the coffee shop.

“We always want to do a good job with customer service. We want to have a place for the community to come in and relax — the whole inspiration for the Hangar part of the name is that hangars bring airplanes together. It’s a place you go and chill, people come in and hang out and have cookouts and things like that,” Rodes said. “It’s the same thing here, people don’t say ‘Hey, you want to go hang out and grab a water?’ They say ‘Hey, you want to grab a coffee?'”

They knew they wanted to have Hangar as part of their name but it needed something more. Rodes said 37 was an inside joke between him and Tiffany.

“When she gets hungry I have about 30 minutes to feed her, otherwise I might meet a different personality. We joked about her having 37 personalities when she’s hungry and thought Hangar 37 sounds good,” he said. “It’s also a place in Pearl Harbor but that’s not the inspiration behind that.”

They roast their own coffee right in the store.

The boutique is being opened in a separate space connected to the coffee shop and still a work in progress.

“That is Tiffany’s brainchild. She’s trying to go for a higher quality than you find at department stores and they come in limited numbers,” Rodes said. “It give people some different options so everyone’s not wearing the same shirts.”