“Where is everyone drinking coffee?” The question that built Bean Rush
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: Bean Rush Coffee
How Shannon and Mark turned a question they kept asking on the docks of the Caribbean into Bean Rush Cafe — a West Annapolis fixture now 14 years strong.
A question that wouldn't go away
Years ago, Shannon was a chef on yachts in the Caribbean and Mark was a first mate. He's Australian, where, as he'll tell you, there's a coffee shop on every single corner. So every time the couple came home to Shannon's hometown of Annapolis to visit, Mark kept asking the same thing. “Where is everyone drinking coffee?” he'd wonder. This was twenty years ago, when there were even fewer cafes around than there are today, and the question stuck.
It stuck enough that they left yachting altogether, came back to the area, and answered it themselves.
Fast, casual — and made from scratch
Bean Rush Cafe was never meant to be the kind of place where you sit for forty minutes waiting on a plate. Shannon and Mark wanted something quicker, but they refused to cut the corner that mattered most to a chef: the food.
“We wanted it to be fast and casual and fresh. But made from scratch.”
That's the whole philosophy in one breath. The banana bread, the egg salad, the tuna, the parfaits, the wraps — it's all made in house, nothing pulled from a package. And yet the goal is a five-to-ten-minute ticket: a great coffee and a homemade sandwich, and you're back out the door and on your way to work or school. Fresh and fast, with no apology for either.
Three locations, one early alarm
These days Bean Rush has grown to three spots — the original Crownsville flagship, now 14 years strong; the West Annapolis cafe on Annapolis Street, which has been serving the neighborhood for 12 years; and a cafe inside the hospital at Baltimore Washington Medical Center. A typical day at the cafe starts around 5:30 a.m., when the team arrives to bake, set up, and work through the prep list before the crowds.
Shannon's own day looks different now than what it did in the beginning. She likes to get up and check on all three locations, swinging by whichever one will be busiest — Crownsville for the early commuters heading toward Fort Meade and D.C., then Annapolis for the lunch rush, and finally the hospital to make sure everyone's set for the day.
What 14 years teaches you
Bean Rush celebrated 14 years this month, and Shannon doesn't pretend the early days were easy. Young business, young kids, hard mornings. Ask her what she'd tell her younger self and the answer is short and certain.
“Just keep going”
A big part of what kept them going was the neighborhood. COVID was a brutal stretch, and the community rallied. As Shannon puts it, without the people in Annapolis and Crownsville, “we would absolutely not be here.” The regulars, the everyday faces — they're the reason there's a fourteenth year to celebrate at all.
The secret behind the tea menu
Here's the part that makes people laugh: for the first 13 years she owned a coffee shop, Shannon didn't drink coffee. “I didn't drink coffee until a year ago,” she says. She was a devoted tea drinker — and that, it turns out, is exactly why Bean Rush has such a sprawling tea selection. She'd grown tired of cafes that offered the same four sad options. “I want a variety for every type of drinker,” she says, whether you're after tea, coffee, smoothies, or one of the golden-milk lattes and chais on the menu.
It was on a trip overseas about a year ago that she finally started drinking coffee, and she hasn't stopped since. Now she owns the place and drinks the product. Most mornings she wakes up thinking, “all right, where are we getting our coffee from today?” — and nine times out of ten the answer is Bean Rush, though she'll happily make the rounds of the local cafes too.
Find Bean Rush Cafe
112 Annapolis Street, Annapolis, MD beanrushcafe.com
Hours — Mon–Fri 6:00–4:00 · Sat 7:00–4:00 · Sun 7:00–2:00
Also at — Crownsville, MD · Baltimore Washington Medical Center
Whether you're a tea person, a coffee person, or still deciding, Bean Rush has been built to have something for you — right down to the travel mugs, sweatshirts, syrups, and bags of beans you can take home. Stop in and see why it's where the locals go.
