The building at 1312 Newcastle Street has stood since 1884. It came through Brunswick's 1898 flood, and it once housed the Brunswick Yacht Club. The club's initials are still pressed into the brick out front. These days the ground floor holds The Brunswick Mercantile, and it is filling in one room at a time.
The market came first. A coffee and bakery counter followed in early October, with ice cream still on the way. The restaurant, called PIEDMONT, is last in line, with a target date of December 1. The shelves you can shop this week are where the December kitchen will get its food, and the coffee counter is where diners will wait for a seat.
A Building Too Big for One Business
Owner Zach Siler grew up on a farm in Asheboro, North Carolina. His family raised its own food there, and his mother sold pottery and handmade goods from a small family shop. He started working in restaurants at 14. Later he managed a research lab before stepping away from that career.
The Brunswick News reported that Brunswick came into the picture in 2024. He was driving to visit his parents and stopped to meet friends at Little Zooks downtown. One night turned into three. Discovering Coastal Georgia says he sold what he owned and moved here on New Year's Eve 2024. Later, a solo trip through Thomasville took him past a shop and restaurant near a local dairy farm, and that visit gave him the model. "Something like this," he told the outlet. "This is what I want to create."
The Newcastle Street building wasn't for lease when he found it, and he talked the owners into changing their minds. While walking the space, he found a hidden closet with light coming through a crack and asked if he could knock through the wall. That was when he decided the space was too big for any one business. It would take several working together.
So the Mercantile works more like a small compound than a single store. Market BQK and coffee+cream are open now, with hours posted on their pages. PIEDMONT is listed as coming soon. Siler's own fragrance line, Brunswick Candle Company, sells on the market shelves. He describes the coffee shop, market and restaurant as one continuous experience, tied together by wandering, conversation and Queen Square just outside.
What a Day at 1312 Newcastle Looks Like Right Now
Both open counters keep the same hours seven days a week, so there is no weekday schedule to memorize. Here is how a day lays out, based on the hours posted on the Mercantile's website:
- 7:30 a.m. coffee+cream opens. The menu runs from espresso in double, triple and quad shots to drip coffee, americanos, lattes, cappuccinos, mochas and nitro cold brew. Hot tea, chai lattes and matcha lattes round out the board.
- 11 a.m. Market BQK opens. It brings together more than 20 Georgia makers, growers, artisans and small businesses: candles, handmade pottery, fresh produce, pantry staples, sweets and things for your dog.
- Afternoon into evening. The coffee+cream bakery case carries breads, pastries and sweets, made in-house and supplied by local community bakeries. The small-batch homemade ice cream is listed as coming soon: seven favorites plus one rotating flavor.
- 9:30 p.m. Both counters close.
Market BQK was open by late September. coffee+cream was announced for October 1, and its page listed daily hours and a full menu by October 8. No grand opening was ever held for the whole building. It simply opened a piece at a time.
The Shelves Double as the Restaurant's Pantry
Look at who supplies the market and you can see why it had to open first. According to The Brunswick News, Farm 99, which sells its goods in Sterling, is Siler's primary partner. Farmers and producers from the twice-monthly Forward Brunswick Farmers Market are also in the mix, and he had three local honey producers lined up before opening. The plan is for PIEDMONT to tie in closely with this front room, which faces Newcastle Street and will be stocked with local fruits, vegetables, cheese, meat, spices and honey.
The market's merchant list names some of them:
- Farm 99
- 5 Oaks Farm
- SourBrough
- Mason Creek Designs
- Brunswick Candle Company
Discovering Coastal Georgia photographed Sweet Grass Dairy cheeses in a basket with Farm 99 produce. The market also rotates a spotlight maker. Recently that was Chrissy Green of Abundant Provisions, whose functional pottery includes her "Greatest Graters" for garlic, peppers, tomatoes, onions and herbs. The market found her at the St. Simons market, and her work now has a permanent spot in the Artisan Cabinet.
Siler calls the idea behind all of this "filling the holes." He bakes only a small batch of bread each morning so a local bakery's loaves have room on the shelf too. He has also described a plan to let farmers market vendors bring in their unsold Saturday goods so they don't go to waste. He told The Brunswick News he wants every part of the business to be affordable for the wider Brunswick community. One planned way to do that is to sell wine in the store that guests can buy and carry into the restaurant. The wine policy and the Saturday arrangement are plans he described before opening. Ask at the counter whether they're running yet.
What PIEDMONT Is Planned to Be
The name comes from the piedmont region of North Carolina where Siler grew up: fertile farmland at the foot of the mountains. The menu will draw on piedmont regions around the world. Discovering Coastal Georgia lists the Carolinas and Georgia, France, Spain, the Andes and Northern Italy, with small plates built around sauces from each region. The Brunswick News, reporting earlier, named Spain, France and South Africa. It said the cooking would lean on fresh produce, fruit that keeps well dried or preserved, and shareable plates. The two accounts differ a little on the regions, which suggests the menu was still taking shape.
What it won't serve is clearer. Siler told The Brunswick News:
"You're not going to get fries, you're not going to get a burger, you're not going to get an 18-ounce steak."
The bar will be wine-forward, with a short list of beer and liquor, possibly two brands of each type of spirit. Seating is the part people will notice most. The plan calls for two large shared tables in the middle of the room and a few smaller spots around the edges, based on a restaurant he ran in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He told the paper he plans to walk the room as host and nudge people into talking with the person next to them. There are no reservations. It's first come, first served.
That brings back the opening order. With no reservation book, a full room means a wait, and Siler has already said how he hopes people will spend it: get a drink at the bar, wander the market, or step outside to Queen Square. The two counters open now are where that wait will happen. As of mid-October, the Mercantile's homepage still lists PIEDMONT as "coming soon," with no posted hours. December 1 is still the target, but check the website before you plan a night around it.
The Room in the Middle
Between the market and the restaurant is a transitional space that Siler calls the roots of the business. A worn tree stump sits at its center. "It's weathered, but it's withstood time, and it's still here," he told The Brunswick News. He said the stump stands for Brunswick, and he hopes it predicts how the Mercantile will do.
He has talked with local and state emergency management agencies about making the building a community hub during a major weather event. The plan includes public wifi that he means to keep running through power outages, and giving away food that would otherwise spoil during a long outage. Like the restaurant, that part is still a plan.
For now, the Mercantile is a market and a coffee counter on Queen Square, open from 7:30 every morning until 9:30 every night. Updates on PIEDMONT will come through brunswickmercantile.com and the Mercantile's Instagram.
New places like the Mercantile change what a block of Newcastle Street feels like day to day, and keeping up with them is part of how I know downtown Brunswick. If you'd like to talk through what's opening around Queen Square and how it fits the way you live, I'd love to hear from you. Lori Lynn is always glad to grab a coffee and chat. Let's Connect.
