Backlot Coffee works on a new Evanston cafe at Lake Street and Ashland Avenue

Backlot Coffee is working on a new cafe at 1424 Lake St. in Evanston, at the corner of Ashland Avenue across from Penny Park, What Now Chicago reported on October 7, 2026. The project is going through city approvals, and no opening date has been set.

The coffee company, co-founded in 2016 by Evanston-area locals Isaac Bloom and John Kim, already runs a cafe on Central Street. What Now credited Evanston Now with first reporting the Lake Street plan. The new cafe would sit southwest of downtown, next door to a preschool, according to What Now, which expects a menu close to the Central Street lineup of espresso drinks, pastries and breakfast.

The new cafe at a glance

The reporting on the Lake Street project so far comes down to a few points.

• The address is 1424 Lake St., at Ashland Avenue across from Penny Park.
• The owners are Backlot co-founders John Kim and Isaac Bloom.
• The menu is expected to follow Backlot’s other cafes, with coffee, pastries and breakfast items, What Now reported.
• The project is going through city approvals.
• No opening date, hours or prices have been announced.

How many cafes Backlot runs today

What Now’s headline calls Lake Street Backlot’s fourth location, but the same story lists four places the company has operated: Evanston, Old Irving Park, Lincoln Square and a small cafe at Northwestern University. Backlot’s own website describes the company as three cafes and a roastery. Counting those three, Lake Street would be the fourth cafe and the second in Evanston.

The Daily Northwestern’s Best of Evanston 2025 issue reported that Backlot ran a small cafe inside Kresge Hall on the Evanston campus. That counter does not appear on the locations page of Backlot’s website.

Backlot’s website lists three cafes, all open from 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

• The original cafe is at 2006 Central St. in Evanston, and the phone number is (847) 859-2144.
• The Old Irving Park cafe is at 3982 N. Avondale Ave. in Chicago, and the phone number is (773) 657-3797.
• The Lincoln Square cafe is at 2424 W. Montrose Ave. in Chicago, and the phone number is (773) 654-1506.

From Central Street to Chicago and back

Backlot started in a storefront that was already a coffee shop. In July 2016, Patch reported that Kim and Bloom had bought Linz & Vail on Central Street and renamed the shop Backlot Coffee, serving coffee from an outside roaster at first. DNAinfo later put Backlot’s opening in May 2016.

Chicago came next. In 2017 Backlot took over a vacant coffee shop space at 3982 N. Avondale Ave. in Old Irving Park, part of the Irving-Avondale-Keeler development, and DNAinfo reported on August 15, 2017 that the cafe was open. “A coffee shop is a neighborhood,” Kim said in a written statement at the time.

The Central Street shop grew in 2018, when Backlot bought the storefront next door, opened up the wall between them and built a kitchen. The company opened a roastery the same year, according to a 2019 Daily Northwestern story. In October 2019, Backlot took over the former Other Brother Coffee Bar at 1549 Sherman Ave., at Grove Street in downtown Evanston, as the company’s third retail cafe. The corner was familiar ground: Kim had bought that storefront in 2011 and operated there until 2015, the paper reported. Kim told the Daily Northwestern that at Backlot, “we want you to feel as if you’ve been seen.”

The downtown cafe lasted about a year and a half. In May 2021, Backlot ended coffee service on Sherman Avenue after the owners learned another coffee company would open across the street, and turned the corner into a plant shop with a partner, the Daily Northwestern reported. The Central Street and Avondale Avenue cafes kept pouring. By August 2025, the paper’s guide to Evanston coffee shops described Backlot as having two Chicago locations, and the company’s website places them in Old Irving Park and Lincoln Square.

The founders and the company

Kim moved to Evanston in 1996 and has opened six hospitality businesses in the city over roughly 20 years, according to Backlot’s website. He opened his first Evanston coffeehouse with his brother in 2005, when he was 30, the Daily Northwestern reported in 2019. Bloom grew up on Howard Street in Evanston and now lives in Lincoln Square, the company says.

Backlot has grown well past one Central Street counter. The company’s website says the staff went from six people in 2016 to 42, and that roasting climbed from 10,000 pounds of coffee a year in 2018 to more than 40,000 pounds in 2023. The site also says full-time staff have had health insurance since 2020 and that all employees get a 401(k) plan and paid time off. Sam Lowe is the director of coffee, per the same page.

Students have noticed. The Daily Northwestern named Backlot the best coffee shop in the same Best of Evanston 2025 package, pointing to bagels, burritos, toast and breakfast sandwiches alongside specialty drinks such as an oatmeal cookie latte. Back in 2018, Time Out Chicago noted the Central Street shop’s squirrel mural by local artist Jay Ryan and a local art display that rotated monthly.

The corner across from Penny Park

The Lake Street site faces Penny Park, a playground at 1500 Lake St. that has been at that address since 1990, Patch reported in 2015. The original structure was built almost entirely of wood. Residents organized the funding and donated materials and labor, and resident George Rieger told the Daily Northwestern that more than 2,800 people contributed to the build.

The city had planned to replace the playground, and a citizen group formed to save the original design. After the City Council handed the decision to the Parks and Recreation Board in January 2015, the city began reconstructing the playground in September 2016, Patch reported.

What approvals remain

Exactly where the project stands is not clear from the public record. What Now’s story says in the body text that the project was recently approved, while a photo caption says the cafe is going through city approvals. The City Manager’s weekly memo of October 2, 2026 does not list 1424 Lake St. in the city’s weekly zoning report, which tracks zoning applications received, pending or in review. The address is also missing from the health department’s report of pending food establishment license applications, dated October 1. Earlier weekly memos available online, going back to May 22, do not list the address in either report.

Those same city reports show the steps other new food businesses in Evanston are moving through.

• Some projects need a zoning approval, as when a planned Colectivo Coffee Roasters cafe at 2945-2949 Central St. filed for an administrative review use as a “Type 2 Restaurant” on August 13 and was marked approved in the September 4 zoning report.
• New food businesses appear on the health department’s weekly list once they file a food establishment license application, logged by the date received.
• Several applicants on the October 1 list were still waiting on a building permit, shown as “BP” or spelled out in the status column.
• Most applicants on that list were still waiting on city reviews and inspections.

Colectivo’s food license application, received July 20, still read “Pending Inspections, FCO” on the October 1 report. Neither What Now nor the city’s posted reports say which of these steps remain for 1424 Lake St.

Getting to Lake Street and Ashland Avenue

The corner is southwest of downtown Evanston, and these options serve the area, according to CTA route and station pages and the City of Evanston.

• The CTA Purple Line stops at Davis station, 1612 Benson Ave., which connects to Metra Union Pacific North trains.
• Dempster is the next Purple Line stop south of Davis, and Purple Line trains between Linden and Howard run daily, with express trips to the Loop only during weekday rush periods.
• The CTA’s #93 California/Dodge bus stops at Dodge Avenue and Lake Street and ends at the Davis station, with service seven days a week.
• The CTA’s #206 Evanston Circulator, a weekday rush-hour route, has a westbound stop at Lake and Ashland during the morning rush.
• CTA route 201 and Pace routes 208, 213 and 250 also stop at the Davis station.

Visiting Backlot in the meantime

Until the Lake Street shop opens, Backlot’s Evanston base is the original Backlot Coffee at 2006 Central St. What Now lists espresso, americanos, specialty drinks, breakfast and lunch items, pastries, and plain, sesame, everything and raisin bagels on the Central Street menu. Backlot’s online shop sells house-roasted whole-bean coffee starting at $19.50 and subscriptions starting at $38.

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