How Two Grandmothers Built Chamblee’s Newest Coffee Destination

Stellow Coffee opened on April 24 at 3466 Chamblee Dunwoody Way in Chamblee, and by the first weekend the espresso bar was drawing waits of 45 minutes. Owner Clinton Perry built the 1,900-square-foot shop around a specific governing brief: recreate the physical feeling of visiting his two grandmothers. Every supplier relationship, every furniture selection, and every drink name follows from that instruction.

Perry’s origin story has traveled well since he first announced the brick-and-mortar plans. Less examined is the network of Atlanta-based collaborators he assembled to make the tribute operational, three operators whose own histories fit closely with the community-first philosophy the shop was designed to carry.

A Name Built from Two Women

The name is a compound built from two memorials. “Stell” comes from the Steller’s jay, the favorite bird of Perry’s grandmother Sammie Stell, known in the family as Mema. The “ow” belongs to GrandBetty, born Betty Rose, whose favorite color was yellow. Perry, the youngest of seven children, spent long stretches of his childhood in both women’s homes, and the governing instruction he has given for what Stellow should feel like has not changed from those visits.

You go to your grandmother’s to relax.

Black-and-white photographs of both women hang throughout the 1,900-square-foot room. Furniture and curtains echo specific pieces Perry remembers from each home. Even the two bathrooms carry different personalities: one warm and midcentury-inspired, the other softer and more traditionally feminine, each a room-scale portrait of a different woman’s sensibility.

On Stellow’s tribute page for both women, Perry describes Sammie Stell as a breast cancer survivor and “the caffeine in our coffee,” a presence equally suited to an adventure and to the end of a long day. Betty Rose’s voice, he writes, was like a yellow flower, her favorite color. Both descriptions predate the lease signing. They function as the shop’s closest thing to a founding document.

The Three Partners Who Shaped the Shop

Perry did not pull suppliers from a vendor list. He selected Atlanta-area operators whose own histories share something recognizable with his: each built a business from a personal premise, each started smaller than where they operate today, and each is rooted in the same metropolitan food and design community the shop was built to join.

Bellwood Coffee Brings the Beans

The Atlanta specialty roaster co-founded by two brothers, Bellwood Coffee began as a pop-up cart in 2019 before converting a Riverside space into a flagship cafe and roastery that now also runs a well-regarded East Atlanta Village location. The roastery’s sourcing philosophy centers on direct importer relationships and precision roasting that surfaces natural flavor rather than masking it with darker profiles. That approach fits Perry’s preference for a menu that does not ask guests to decode what they are drinking. The parallel between a cafe founded on mobile carts and a roaster that also started mobile is not something Perry has addressed publicly, but it is visible in the supply chain he assembled.

Apple-Butter Bakery Fills the Pastry Case

Shellane Brown, owner and lead baker at Apple-Butter Bakery, supplies the full pastry program. Brown started the family-run Stone Mountain operation in 2009, expanded to a Fayetteville location inside the Trilith mixed-use development in 2021, and has since won Season 11 of Food Network’s “Halloween Wars.” She also competed on Discovery Channel’s “Cakealikes,” a competition in which bakers construct life-size edible likenesses of public figures.

At Stellow, Brown’s case operates in deliberate restraint: gluten-free sweet potato coffee cake, almond croissants, quiche, and breakfast sandwiches. A baker capable of building a life-size sugar sculpture of The Rock does not need to announce that range in a coffee shop pastry case. The restraint fits a shop whose governing philosophy treats simplicity as a hospitality asset rather than a limitation.

Commoner Design Co. Frames the Room

Emma Flynn, founder of Commoner Design Co., an Atlanta studio she launched in 2021 after years at one of the world’s largest commercial architecture firms, built the interior around a cocktail bar-style counter at the room’s center rather than against its walls. White floors push light across the space. Flynn’s stated design philosophy is creating spaces that feel personal and accessible rather than institutional, a brief that maps almost exactly onto Perry’s directive. The challenge was converting a tribute to two specific women into a 70-seat commercial room that strangers could occupy without feeling like visitors at a private memorial. Early crowds suggest the translation worked.

Drinks Written in Memory

The Signature Trio

The core espresso menu keeps to four options: cappuccino, cortado, Americano, and latte, all pulled from the house bean supply and served in traditional Italian portion sizes. Perry told Atlanta Magazine the short list is intentional. “I think people want simplicity. You can get overwhelmed going to a coffee shop. It can be intimidating.” A tight menu functions as a hospitality decision in the same register as choosing warm furniture and a familiar photograph for the wall: it reduces the cognitive friction on arrival.

Three specialty drinks carry the memorial weight. Betty’s Fresca Soda combines espresso with house-made blood orange syrup, a direct reference to the only soda Perry was allowed to drink as a child, a connection to GrandBetty’s household. Sammie’s Sunrise layers cinnamon, brown sugar, and orange peel, assembled from the sensory memory of mornings in Mema’s kitchen. A banana coconut latte rounds out the trio. Each drink has a sourced memory behind it rather than a flavor calendar.

Beyond the Espresso Bar

For guests not ordering espresso, Stellow offers green matcha and blue matcha alongside tea and hot chocolate. A non-caffeinated Lil-ccino is available for children who arrive with parents. That option mirrors the shop’s operating premise: this is not a coffee shop that accommodates non-drinkers as an afterthought. It is a room designed so that anyone who would have felt at home in either grandmother’s house has something in their hand from the moment they sit down.

House-made syrups, including the blood orange base for Betty’s Fresca Soda, are produced on-site rather than sourced commercially. That production choice adds labor. It also keeps the drink’s stated memory intact between the person who conceived it and the cup that reaches the table.

Seventy Seats, One Central Counter

Emma Flynn’s decision to place the bar at the room’s center rather than along a wall changes the social geometry of the space. A peripheral coffee counter routes customers along a fixed line and toward the door. A central counter makes the preparation area part of the room’s middle, which tends to produce longer dwell times and a different ambient energy: more conversation, less queue movement. Stellow seats roughly 70 guests between the main floor and an outdoor patio, a substantial capacity for a debut espresso bar run by a founder with no prior brick-and-mortar experience.

Within weeks of the April opening, weekend queues were running 45 minutes. Atlanta’s coffee market has expanded steadily, with established local roasters like San Francisco Coffee opening new Atlanta neighborhood locations in the same window. Stellow enters that market without a legacy customer base or a second location to absorb overflow. A 45-minute wait in month one is as meaningful as any single metric the shop will produce this year: novelty drives early traffic at every new opening, but return visitors who wait that long a second time are a different signal entirely.

• Espresso drinks (cappuccino, cortado, Americano, latte) in traditional Italian portion sizes
• Three signature specialty drinks: Betty’s Fresca Soda, Sammie’s Sunrise, and a banana coconut latte
• Green and blue matcha
• Tea, hot chocolate, and the non-caffeinated Lil-ccino for children
• Pastries from Apple-Butter Bakery: gluten-free sweet potato coffee cake, almond croissants, quiche, and breakfast sandwiches

Eight Carts Before One Door

Stellow launched as a mobile espresso cart business in 2020. Perry and business partner Luke Cagle built the operation through private events and pop-ups across Atlanta, growing the client list to include the Atlanta Braves. Perry now operates eight espresso carts alongside the Chamblee location. The mobile side of the business did not close when the permanent lease was signed; it continues as a parallel revenue stream and the same one that funded the years of concept refinement that preceded the Chamblee address.

The entire Stellow concept, the grandmother tributes, the drink names, the supplier philosophy, was operational at private events before a single chair was installed in Chamblee. Perry described his approach at opening: “I took everything I love and dumped it into a coffee shop. People love to be a part of something beautiful.” The shop did not generate the idea. The idea used the shop to become permanent.

Plans announced since opening include florals and classes within the Stellow space, a direct extension of Betty Rose’s history as a floral shop owner and fashion designer. Perry has described the full concept as a room where coffee, flowers, and shared creative skills coexist. If the Chamblee operation stabilizes into the steady neighborhood anchor its first-month queues suggest, the florals and classes follow the same blueprint. If the operational demands of a fresh pastry program and a full espresso service crowd out the scheduling room, that expansion stays on the calendar rather than the floor plan.