Brickscape Cafe Is Heaven for LEGO Lovers

Longmont’s new Brickscape Cafe is a LEGO paradise — and as one might imagine from a store devoted to one of the oldest and best toy lines in recent memory, it’s still building itself, brick by brick.

Owner Billie Abbitt opened the store in March at the Old Town Marketplace in Longmont. Despite the name, it’s not yet a cafe, but it's a retail wonderland devoted to LEGO: new and used sets (both on the market and retired), minifigs and fun little things such as LEGO earrings. It also offers Colorado-based sodas, mocktails and even non-alcoholic beer.

Abbitt does have plans to add coffee to Brickscape Cafe; in his twenties, he owned a successful coffee shop in Gainesville, Florida. “It had an amazing community that built up around it,” Abbitt recalls. The coffee shop was situated between the University of Florida campus and several nearby drinking establishments, so it saw most of its business at night and in the wee hours, after last call. It didn’t even open until 5 p.m. So Abbitt is used to thinking outside the box and building businesses with a creative spirit.

The inspiration for Brickscape Cafe came through Abbitt’s use of LEGOs as therapy. He worked in the corporate world for Dutch conglomerate Philips until taking short-term disability in 2022 for depression and some related physical and mental issues. “I went from being a high performer to having difficulty sending a single e-mail to someone I’d worked with for twenty years,” says Abbitt. “It was a rough period.”

For something to do in his downtime, he began sorting his kids’ LEGOs, which grew naturally into crafting his own builds. “It was good for me,” says Abbitt. “It was something creative to do; it got me going. It reminded me of a lot of things that LEGO products have been good for over the years. I’ve actually used the LEGO company as a case study at various times in my corporate life. Quality control, customer experience, employee experience — I already had a huge respect for the company.

“But [LEGO] also does a lot with neurodiversity, mental health issues, things like that," he continues. "They have special programs like learning Braille using a specific set of bricks, and they have a methodology they call ‘serious play’ that enterprise companies can use to help their teams visualize problems and come up with solutions. So I thought, 'Man, it would be cool if someone was able to bring all this under one roof.'”

He decided to combine the idea of his old community-centered coffee house with the fun and creative opportunities inherent in LEGO. And Longmont seemed to be the perfect place for this all-ages idea (he and his wife moved to the area in 2016). "We were actually on our way to check out Boulder," Abbitt recalls, "but we read an article on the way about this place called Longmont. So we took a detour. As soon as we saw the town, we thought, 'This is it.'

“It’s a playful place,” he continues. “Very family-friendly. I thought this might be a really nice location to bring multiple generations together in one community.”
Despite Abbitt’s long use of LEGOs as a business model, he wasn’t a super-fan as a kid. “I was born in the 1970s,” he says, “so it was all about Star Wars for me. Later on, I got into robotics sets and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, but I probably only put together one or two LEGO sets as a kid — not much more than that. Even now, I’m not really a collector. Most of the people who come into the store have significantly bigger LEGO collections than me.”

He says that it was Star Wars, in fact, that actually saved LEGO as a company. “In the early 2000s, LEGO was almost bankrupt. It was only when they got the license for Star Wars that they turned things around," he explains. "In eleven years, they went from bankruptcy risk to being the number-one toy company in the world.”

And Star Wars isn't the only thing Abbitt loves that’s been given the LEGO treatment. “Right now, LEGO is actively developing something for the fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons in 2024. There are already people who use LEGO and LEGO mini-figures for gaming miniatures," he says. "When we get more space for Brickscape Cafe, that’s one of the events I’d like to host: some role-playing, LEGO style.”
Abbitt has lot of future plans for Brickscape Cafe, including fulfilling the food-and-drink promise inherent in the name. “We don’t have room yet for the cafe part of the idea,” Abbitt says. “It’s something that’s going to grow.” For now, there’s Maldo’s Coffee and Boba shop across from the store, and next door is Abuelita’s Empanadas. “It’s all in process,” he says.

For now, the store is open for retail sales and will continue to host events. On Sunday, May 21, it’s hosting a LEGO Mindfulness Workshop in partnership with SunShineBlu, a local nonprofit devoted to supporting those with depression and anxiety. Over the summer, Brickscape Cafe will also provide several week-long LEGO Engineering Summer Camps, each one devoted to a specific property: Star Wars, Minecraft or Harry Potter.

“This is just the beginning,” promises Abbitt. One brick at a time.

Brickscape Cafe is at 332 Main Street, Suite A4, in Longmont. For hours, events and more information, see Brickscape's website.