Buddy Brew Coffee opened its first Pinellas County location on Aug. 14 inside the Sprouts Farmers Market at 7263 Seminole Blvd. in Seminole, marking the Tampa roaster's first counter across the bay. The opening debuts a ten-location in-store partnership that founders Dave and Susan Ward are building out at Sprouts markets across Tampa Bay.
The Wards began roasting out of their South Tampa garage in 2002 — seven years before formally launching Buddy Brew as a public brand in 2009. The name was borrowed from their Labrador retriever. The garage-to-retail trajectory took the better part of a decade; over the next seventeen years, the company grew its presence through freestanding storefronts, a model that requires a dedicated lease, buildout, and staff at each new address. That approach produced eight Tampa Bay cafes alongside a dedicated roastery and a distribution pipeline that now ships the brand's beans nationwide.
The Sprouts deal, if completed at full scale, would more than double that café count. The operator says ten in-store counters are planned in total; four are now open, with the Seminole location among them. Still ahead in the pipeline: Palm Harbor, South Tampa, Riverview, New Tampa, Trinity, Carrollwood, Valrico, and South Sarasota.
The Seminole counter pours espresso drinks, cold brew, matcha, and smoothies. The food program covers breakfast and lunch, with pastries and rotating seasonal specials — a condensed version of the full café offering, sized to a grocery-floor footprint rather than a standalone storefront.
