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The Auburn coffee company on Monday opened Roast & Toast, a café by day and a cocktail bar by night. Located at 99 Genesee St., the business has been met with "overwhelmingly positive feedback," Simple Roast owner Matt Peirson told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV there Thursday. The response continues the strong hometown support he's received since opening his first kiosk in Grant Avenue Plaza in 2016.

"It feels very good, like something out of a movie," he said. "Everyone is coming out and just happy to see us and support us."

As its name suggests, Roast & Toast serves a menu of specialty toasts to go along with the company's morning beverages like coffee, hot chocolate and tea. Toasts include cinnamon sugar, avocado, peanut butter and banana, smoked apple and — Peirson's favorite — GCT. Short for Goat Cheese Toast, it includes that on sourdough with prosciutto and arugula, all drizzled with Mike's Hot Honey.

"I basically put that on the menu for myself because I just love it," Peirson said with a laugh.

The cafe closes at 2 p.m. daily. But on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Roast & Toast reopens at 5 p.m. with a drink menu of cocktails and more. Signatures include King of Hollywood, Simple Roast's twist on an old-fashioned, with brown sugar chai syrup. There's also wine and craft beer, mostly from New York state, and three cocktails are available as mocktails for non-alcoholic drinkers.

The nighttime food menu consists of grilled cheeses, as well as affogato and tiramisu for dessert.

Everything is served over a custom bar with a base of dark, fluted wood, whose design Peirson researched for hours. He said he's proud to see it every day, feeling it functions perfectly as both a coffee bar and a cocktail bar. The rest of Roast & Toast was designed to strike the same balance, including a lighting system that's warm and bright in the morning but more dim and intimate in the evening.

"It feels warm on a rain day to be in here," Peirson said of the café.

"Then it's also a very nice cocktail bar at night, a space you want to come and have a nice drink and some light food before you go to a show at Auburn Public Theater or The Rev (Theatre Co.)."

The bar was also the biggest piece of Roast & Toast, Peirson said. He arranged last fall to begin leasing the space Jan. 1 from owners Schulz Properties, who operated Rudolph's Sugar Shack there after renovating the historic building. That gave him time to line up contractors, and with little to do outside of adding a bathroom, he was able to open just a few months after announcing the business. 

Still, after adding a third location and nine employees to a company that staffs about 35, Peirson said he's content to "enjoy the status quo" before thinking about his next expansion. Along with running those locations, he continues to roast 850 pounds of coffee beans a week. Many have asked him about bringing Simple Roast to new markets like Camillus, but that's not happening anytime soon.

Then again, he once said he would never open a café.

"People keep thanking me for opening up," he said of Roast & Toast, "and it's really funny because I'm so thankful that they care and want to come out."