10/21/2026
We could ask all the time the story of how the weird rabbit got its name!
We had just got under contract the building in Cuba city to expand & uses a larger roasting facility -a week before we realized we had to close Trolley Depot Coffee -(a story for another time! )
As a family we began to discuss the future & what we could take with us into that dream. The answer was in our community table-the patio we had been gathering at the new Cuba city building.
Every day, people from different walks of life gathered around this table & shared amazing coffee & conversation. We had carved out a tiny sliver of the world where we could disagree, debate & discuss & still dine together.
We got the opportunity to open the shop in Galena ( another story for another time!) We needed a new name that reflected this.
I (Joy) watched the dynamic around our community table develop & it reminded me of two of my favorite authors, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Their ability to debate & disagree & discuss is why we have some of the greatest literary works of our day. We wanted to reflect that. They & their friends met regularly at a pub to do what we were seeing happen in my own coffee shop.
So I knew I wanted to create a brand that reflected the warmth & history of the Oxford tradition.
Our son raises rabbits & as we discussed names it was natural for a rabbit to become the face of the brand. After many discusses we finally settled on The Wired Rabbit.
Now we had to decide what our rabbit should look like. I began to dream up the persona of this rabbit. He was a British professor who had traveled the world. He was a bit arrogant, but in the spirit of Sherlock Holmes because he truly is a genius. He was a bit intimidating, but if you sat down for coffee with him, you’d find him a lovable grandpa figure and so on! After dreaming this up, I had our artist Angela Bergsma design our logo and create a portrait that captured this.
And our WIRED RABBIT was born!