Sequim's Grain Elevator Is Pouring Coffee Again. The Owners Built It for the Evening.

Sequim's old grain elevator reopened to customers this month with a coffee counter that serves espresso and breakfast. Ryan Schaafsma and Jason Hoffman have been reworking 531 W. Washington St. since May 2022, and their plan centers on later in the day. The coffee counter that opened Oct. 14 shares its room with a wine lounge. Its announced schedule runs to 10 p.m. on weekends. Two more pieces are still to come: a taphouse with space for live entertainment and three short-term lofts whose guests can use the café after closing.

If you live in SunLand, you have driven past the tower on trips downtown for years, and it was empty the whole time. It is open now, but only in part, and the part that is open says a lot about what the rest is meant to be.

What's open, and where in the building

The Sequim Gazette reported that The Coffee Mill officially opened Wednesday, Oct. 14. A soft opening on Saturday, Oct. 10, gave staff a practice run. That morning, members of Sequim's Cars & Coffee club held their monthly gathering at the granary to show support.

The project has three parts, each in a different section of the building and each opening on its own schedule.

The café seats about 35 to 40 people, and there is outdoor seating on a patio the owners call The Porch. General manager Linda Donaghy oversees the whole venue, with a staff of about 15 for the coffee shop and wine lounge.

The menu is starting small on purpose and will grow as the staff gets comfortable. The planned lineup includes bagels, biscuits and gravy, burritos, soups, salads and sandwiches. Drinks include espresso, signature coffees, specialty teas, Italian sodas and hot chocolate. In the evening, the Granary Cellars side pairs wine with appetizers such as chili cheese nachos and wings.

The hours tell you what the place is for

The opening schedule is 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week. In the Gazette's pre-opening story, the owners said they planned to extend hours once staff settled in, to 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

The same story describes those later hours as a response to community requests for "a place where adults can hang out later in the evening." Each of the other pieces is also built around evenings.

• The wine lounge is the café's evening extension, in the same room rather than a separate venue.
• The restaurant is designed so diners can linger and not feel rushed, and it includes space for live entertainment.
• The lofts will let guests use the café space after hours for games or just to hang out.
• A side room, still unnamed, extends the café seating now and is slated to become meeting and conference space.

Right now, The Granary is a daytime café that closes at 6. Once the extended hours start and the restaurant opens, the building should be busiest in the evening, the hours downtown Sequim has asked for more of. The extended hours are an announced plan, not a confirmed schedule, so check thesequimgranary.com or the owners' Facebook page before you plan an evening visit. Parts of the website still describe the building as under restoration.

Opening in phases was a change of plan

The owners first meant to open all three businesses together. In a 2025 interview quoted by the Gazette, Schaafsma explained the change as construction neared completion. It made more sense to run the finished spaces than to wait for everything. "That might not be ideal, but still workable," he said.

The schedule had slipped before. In a September 2024 Sequim Gazette feature, the partners said they had once hoped to finish by summer 2024. Termites had damaged two of the 12 posts holding up the tower. Asked about the biggest setback, Hoffman told the Gazette, "The termite rot on the tower, for sure." Schaafsma described how they handled the delays: "We [had] to let go of the timeline. Once we did that, it became less of a burden."

The first phase alone took almost four and a half years from the May 2022 start. Both owners are Sequim High School graduates who worked day jobs during the renovation.

The building has changed jobs many times

A coffee shop and wine lounge is the latest of many uses for this site. The Gazette's 2024 history, drawing on Sequim Museum & Arts, gives the sequence:

1. 1920s: The Peninsula Grain Company builds the first structure to store lettuce and pea seed. It becomes a delivery and transfer station for farmers shipping produce to the Seattle area.
2. 1935 to 1941: Cecil Dawley runs a feed and farm equipment business there, adding a grocery department in 1938.
3. 1943: After a lease to Western Farmers, the building is sold to the Clallam Co-Operative Association.
4. 1944: Construction starts on the tower that shapes the Sequim skyline today. The goal was 10,000 tons of capacity, replacing a 3,000-ton mill that a 1944 Sequim Press article called inadequate for Olympic Peninsula dairy farmers.
5. 1950s and 1960s: Every day, 40 tons of grain are lifted by belt to the top of the tower and dropped into railroad cars.
6. 1969 to 1977: The Co-Op sells to Dungeness Agriculture Cultural Supply, and the elevator stops operating in 1977.
7. 1981 to 2020: The building holds the Landmark Mall from 1981 to 1988, then the restaurants El Cazador and Baja Cantina through 2020.

The Gazette's 2026 coverage gives the building's construction year as 1923, which fits the 1920s base. The 85-foot tower most people picture when they hear "the granary" went up two decades later, starting in 1944.

Through most of that history, the building served the farm schedule: deliveries, feed and loading railcars. The restaurant planned for the old warehouse will sit at railroad-track level, where grain was once handled. The Gazette notes that this placement reflects the building's original purpose.

What to look for when you go in

The owners put the history on display. These are worth finding before you sit down:

• Glass cutouts in the wooden floor that look down into a usually hidden part of the former Clallam Co-Op Granary, where the wine is now stored.
• The original engine that powered the elevator's machinery, on loan from the Bekkevar family, in the hallway between The Coffee Mill and the rest of the building.
• A molasses pump found under the building, and a length of irrigation pipe.
• Historic photographs from the Smith family and Co-Op Farm and Garden, hung throughout the building.

The tower's appearance has also been debated. In 2023, the owners objected to proposed Verizon equipment changes on the tower, saying the changes conflicted with their goal of restoring its original look, according to the Sequim Gazette. At the time, Schaafsma said they had applied to the state for historic-building designation.

Making a morning of it this fall

On Saturdays, an easy pairing is a short walk away. The Sequim Farmers and Artisans Market's regular season ends Oct. 31, with hours from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Civic Center Plaza. A Winter Market follows on Saturday, Nov. 21, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the same plaza, 152 W. Cedar St.

Two more dates on the Visit Sunny Sequim calendar fall in the evening. They would be a good test of the extended hours if those have started by then:

Go in the morning for now, order at the counter on the Washington Street side and look through the floor at the cellar. When the hours extend, and later when the restaurant opens downstairs at track level, you can come back in the evening.

Trisha and Shawnna have watched this corner of downtown change for a long time, and the progress at the granary is good news for everyone who lives nearby. If you want to know how new places like The Granary are shaping daily life around SunLand, or you're thinking about what that might mean for your own plans, Trisha J Cobb is glad to sit down over coffee and talk it through. Let's Connect.