Dexter Cafe Opens Location Inside Cottage Inn

For customers keeping an eye on their waistlines, is offering a new healthful alternative.

Owner Hamid Jamshidi is branching out to include sandwiches, coffee, pastries and bread from Zingerman's in a new venture he's calling Dexter Cafe.

"We've been trying to find a way to utilize the extra dining room space inside Cottage Inn for some time now," Jamshidi said. "Adding sandwiches and coffee for our customers seemed like a natural fit."

Jamshidi, a resident of Ann Arbor who has operated Cottage Inn for 10 years, said he has always enjoyed Zingerman's high quality-breads and pastries and wanted to bring the products to Dexter.

"They (Zingerman's) really have a high-quality product and a recognizable name to customers in Dexter," he said. "And I wanted to offer customers a healthy alternative to fast food."

The cafe has been open since late September and is in the process of ramping up its menu offerings. Currently, it offers a selection of panini sandwiches and warm and cold beverages. The cafe also sells Zingerman's coffee by the pound and will eventually allow customers to place an online order for other Zingerman's products and pick them up in Dexter.

"Once our own website is up and running in a few weeks, customers will be able to order whatever they want from Zingerman's and pick it up at our store in Dexter in one or two days," Jamshidi said. "Bread, pastries, cookies, coffee — whatever you are looking for, we will have it on site."

The cafe will also begin offering breakfast sandwiches and an expanded lunch menu in the coming months.

"Right now, we're in the middle of a soft opening," Jamshidi said. "We have limited hours but will expand into weekends and afternoons once we have the customers to justify the extra hours."

Nicholas Fitzgibbon of Ypsilanti said the cafe is a great addition to the community.

"I come to Dexter all the time to visit family, and we just happened to stumble onto the cafe last week," he said. "The sandwiches are excellent."

Jamshidi said he is looking forward to the cafe's growth.

"Dexter is a great community with some very good people who have supported my pizza business over the last 10 years and will, hopefully, continue to support the cafe as well," he said.

Dexter Cafe is open from 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday. Cottage Inn is open from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon-9 p.m. Sunday.