- September 24, 2026
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Roberto Torres has not forgotten the lesson that came from opening three cafes at once.
The founder of Blind Tiger Coffee Roasters remembers how taxing that period was for the Tampa coffee company, and how easily growth can turn from opportunity to overextension. Less than two years ago, Torres was talking about disciplined expansion and the need to avoid moving too fast.
Now Blind Tiger is moving faster anyway.
The company has grown to nine company-owned cafes, including a new location in downtown Tampa’s Rivergate Tower, and Torres says it could open six to eight more locations in the next 24 months. The company has also expanded beyond walk-in cafe sales, adding catering, a mobile espresso bar, office coffee opportunities and a growing grocery business.
The question now is one that hits many fast-growing businesses: Can Blind Tiger become a larger regional company without losing the local identity that made it resonate in Tampa in the first place?
Torres says the shift is not a reversal of his earlier caution. It is a response to demand, new business lines and a stronger internal team.
“I think there’s a couple things that happened,” Torres says. “We saw an increased demand for spaces. And then we also saw an opportunity in other lines of business that we hadn’t done, like grocery stores and everything else.”
Luis Martinez, Torres’ business partner, says the company has focused on infrastructure and automation, including digital signage, automated reports from its point-of-sale system, faster order fulfillment and new inventory systems. The goal, he says, is to build a “digital hub” that helps the company move faster. Blind Tiger also recently returned to Square and rolled out more integrated ordering, loyalty, delivery and customer-engagement tools — a switch saving the company some $80,000 annually in processing fees.
“We focus a lot of our attention on infrastructure and automation, so that is allowing us to free up a lot of time and really hone in on what we need to focus on,” Martinez says.
Martinez says the earlier three-store expansion taught the partners each cafe could not be managed as a stand-alone operation. At the time, he and Torres were too immersed in the cafes’ day-to-day operations to focus adequately on expanding the overall brand.
“I would have tried to treat every store as a part of a network as opposed to individual cafes,” Martinez says as a key lesson learned.
Once the company adopted that approach, he says, it began unifying processes and teams across locations.
The result is a company that is no longer easily defined as just a coffee shop chain. “Primarily, the way that I would describe it is that we are an independent coffee roaster that operates neighborhood cafes,” he says.
That distinction matters. Blind Tiger’s growth plan is not just about adding storefronts. It is about turning a deeply local coffee brand into a broader hospitality, retail and business-services platform, with cafes as the visible front door.
The company’s current momentum, Torres says, is solid. He says Blind Tiger grew about 22% from 2024 to 2025 and is projected to grow about 24% in 2026. The company is profitable, he says, though he is cautious about overstating the strength of the food-and-beverage market. With inflation, higher labor costs, energy costs, fuel costs, coffee prices and tariffs all pressuring operators, Torres says survival itself has become a meaningful benchmark. (He declines to disclose specific company revenue figures.)
“We try to be grateful and thankful that we’re still in business because there’s a lot of people that, especially this summer…summer was brutal for food and beverage and hospitality,” he says. “So remaining in business year over year, I think that’s a win in itself.”
Even so, Blind Tiger is investing in growth. Torres says a typical new location costs $400,000 to $500,000 for buildout and equipment, and usually takes about two years to pay back. The company plans to keep future growth company-owned rather than franchise or license the brand.
Martinez says the company’s first rule is not to pull resources from one business entity to support another. It also tries to limit unnecessary spending as it opens and develops locations.
“I don’t like to say frugal. I like to say resourceful,” Martinez says. “We don’t have to have the latest and greatest model of equipment. We just need the equipment to get the job done, and then over the years, refresh as needed.”
The same approach applies to menus and operating hours, he says. Rather than launch with an expansive menu, the company can add offerings as demand becomes clear.
The growth map starts in Florida. Torres says the company wants to expand statewide first, then move more naturally into the Southeast and along the East Coast. He has talked about building the systems and roasting capacity for a company that could eventually support 50 cafes, though he frames that number less as a target than as a way to understand the size of the opportunity.
“I think it is just trying to figure out what the size of the opportunity is and then what’s the territory,” he says.
In the near term, the company is evaluating several possible sites and opportunities. Torres says Blind Tiger is working with the University of South Florida, wants to “put our hat in the ring with the airport,” and is still evaluating what St. Petersburg could look like. A previously discussed Clearwater Marine Aquarium location, he says, remains one the company is “thinking and figuring out.”
That caution reflects the tension running through Blind Tiger’s next stage. Torres is willing to move faster. But he says the company is not chasing growth just to claim market share.
“Most of the time, I think brands overextend themselves because they think that in order to capture market share, they need to grow very quickly,” he says. “We’ve been very intentional about figuring out or understanding what the right opportunities are.”
Martinez says that evaluation begins with the surrounding neighborhood: whether Blind Tiger fits the mix of nearby businesses and whether its likely customers already live, work or travel there. Coffee is largely a convenience purchase, he says, which makes it difficult to count on customers going far out of their way.
The company also studies where a neighborhood may be headed, including planned renovations, city support, outside investment and interest from other businesses.
“We try to think about long term what’s going to happen with that neighborhood,” Martinez says. “We want to make sure that if we’re putting our all into it, the rest of the neighborhood is also expected to improve.”
That includes understanding each site’s economics. Blind Tiger’s Rivergate Tower cafe opened only about three-tenths of a mile from its One Tampa City Center location, but Torres says he was not concerned about cannibalization.
“I knew that every single building or tower in downtown, it’s like their own little neighborhood,” he says.
That neighborhood mindset also drove one of Blind Tiger’s more unusual moves: the acquisition of Circa 1949, the longtime Seminole Heights beer garden. Torres says the deal was “all about the location” and the real estate. Rather than erase what made Circa familiar, he says the idea is to enhance it with breakfast, lunch and late-night fare while preserving the feel of a neighborhood gathering place.
The Circa deal also hints at how Torres may think about future opportunities. He does not describe that location as a template Blind Tiger has to replicate, but he says the company would explore other chances to purchase real estate if the right opportunity appeared.
Blind Tiger is also pushing into catering, corporate events and packaged coffee. The company added two catering sales representatives and a sales manager to build that side of the business.
The target is the 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. window: lunch-and-learns, board meetings and corporate gatherings where Blind Tiger can sell beyond the four walls of its cafes. Its mobile espresso bar is already booking two or three events a week, Torres says. “It’s been resonating really, really good,” he says. “It’s been really cool to see it.”
Even cooler, says Martinez, is the channel he thinks has the greatest potential for Blind Tiger: grocery.
“Grocery is going to get us into more homes,” he says, “and make us more of a brand name that people associate with outside of our local commuting area.”
Blind Tiger has started with Rolling Oats and Fresh Thyme, a Midwest grocer with roughly 70 locations, and Torres says the company is actively submitting for category reviews with other grocery stores. That consumer packaged goods element, he says, is “really exciting.”
Martinez says the company is targeting specialty grocers and using packaging to create a direct relationship with shoppers who may live far from a Blind Tiger cafe. Bags sold through grocery stores include a QR code that directs customers to a tailored page on Blind Tiger’s website, where they can receive a promotion and order coffees that may not be available at that retailer.
An opportunity like that offers Blind Tiger something many cafe brands covet: revenue not entirely dependent on foot traffic. The opportunity also requires different capabilities, from sales management to packaging, production planning, technology and roasting capacity. It also requires updated inventory systems for cafes, wholesale, catering and merchandise — something Martinez is working on. Blind Tiger is also developing new warehouse processes to support those lines.
All told, Torres says Blind Tiger is on pace to roast north of 100,000 pounds of coffee this year. Supporting a much larger cafe base would likely require a multimillion-dollar investment, he says, and raises yet another question: Should growth be funded internally or through outside capital?
Either way, Torres and Martinez say they are determined to ensure Blind Tiger retains the core that has put it in this position, starting with service. “We try to connect with our customer and tell them that our promise is to deliver legendary hospitality,” Torres says. “That’s what we hang our hat on, and that’s what we try to or strive to do every day.”
