ANN ARBOR, MI — A coffee shop with Austin, Texas, “vibes” has arrived in Ann Arbor.

Hazel Coffee Co, 2111 Packard St., unveiled its offerings in a soft opening Wednesday, Nov. 5, co-owner Bryan Caragay said.

“The community around here has been the most supportive,” Caragay, 29, said. “We have had dozens of people yesterday and today just say how happy they are for us that we got through it and congratulating us.”

Caragay co-owns the shop with his wife, Hailey Polidori Caragay. The two hope to make their coffee shop unique by adding a “coffee-and-community tagline.”

“We really wanted to bring that Southern hospitality to the Midwest and just have a really collaborative, creative environment,” Hailey Polidori Caragay, 29, said. “We want it to be a place people gather from all aspects of creativity.”

Hazel Coffee Co. comes after years of doorstop drop-offs and event-catering, Bryan Caragay said.

The couple, originally from the Plymouth-Canton area and both 2018 Central Michigan University graduates, started a coffee catering company in 2020 when they resided in Austin.

Bryan said his wife dropped off coffee orders door-to-door and used one espresso machine to prepare drinks at the start.

The couple moved to Ann Arbor in 2022 and transitioned their coffee business to catering carts. Bryan said they opened the coffee shop as “a home base” for patrons.

“We get a lot of people saying that they loved our coffee at our catering events but there was nowhere they could actually come and enjoy the coffee themselves,” Bryan said.

The couple “blindly moved” to Ann Arbor because the city has “similar vibes to Austin.”

They began seriously touring potential sites about two years ago, but the locations were either too expensive or “the landlords weren’t great.”

Construction of Hazel Coffee Co., named from an early memory of Hailey’s mother drinking hazelnut coffee, began in May in a vacant lot, close to YORK Food and Drink and Core Collective.

Bryan credits the coffee shop’s landlords, whom he calls “the most amazing landlords you could ever imagine,” for helping him and Hailey with the shop’s initial financial struggles.

Hailey said many local business owners have already stopped by the coffee shop and are excited to collaborate.

“We took a lot of inspiration from coffee shops down in Austin, Texas where everything is super welcoming,” Bryan said. “Our whole thing is you should be able to walk in and get a very well-dialed espresso like a specialty coffee shop would offer. But also, if you’re somebody who’s not into that and you want a chai or a matcha, we’ll be able to provide that for you as well.”

Bryan said the couple does not want customers to be judged for their drink orders.

Menu items include a cinnamon sugar latte, maple sea salt latte and other house-made drinks.

“(Customers) should expect to feel welcomed immediately when they walk in the door,” Bryan said. “They should always feel like someone has made a connection to them and that when they come in, we’re going to make sure that they leave with something they were happy with.”

Hazel Coffee Co is open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day.

The couple is also passionate about technology. In their sophomore years at CMU, they came up with Guarded Safety, a smartphone safety app that alerts users’ contacts if they feel like they’re in a dangerous situation.

The couple’s product won the October 5×5 Night pitch competition at Fenn Valley Vineyards in Fennville in 2017.

Read more: CMU students’ app to improve college safety wins 5×5 Night contest

Want more Ann Arbor-area news? Bookmark the local Ann Arbor news page.

AUSTIN (KXAN) – A slew of authors have dropped out of the lineup for this weekend’s Texas Book Festival (TBF).

“Goosebumps” author R.L. Stine, along with 17 others, won’t appear at the festival due to “unforeseen circumstances,” according to a news release Friday:

• Brian Goldstone
• David A. Graham
• Peter Guralnick
• Alejandro Heredia
• Nathalia Holt
• Julia Ioffe
• Basia Irland
• Graci Kim
• Patricia Lockwood
• Cappy McGarr
• David Nasaw
• Mayra Olivares-Urueta
• Lyla Sage
• Crystal Silva-McCormick
• Peter Swanson
• Jennie Erin Smith
• Bryan Washington

The release came after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued repeated ground delays and limited flights at airports across the country due to the ongoing government shutdown. 

Air traffic controllers have been working unpaid since the shutdown began Oct. 1. The staffing shortages have put pressure on the FAA to take precautions, with the agency announcing Wednesday it would make cuts in “high-volume markets.”

While Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) is not among the 40 airports experiencing these cuts, 35 of those airports have direct flights arriving from AUS. 

Festival organizers did not specify if writers pulled out as a result of delayed or cancelled flights, only writing that one reason they pulled out was “ongoing flight challenges.”

The 2025 Texas Book Festival is Nov. 8-9 in downtown Austin. Admission is free, but there are ticketed sessions for select authors. Those currently scheduled to to appear include Chelsea Handler and Matthew McConaughey. 

TBF is a non-profit that brings authors to K-12 schools and awards grants to Texas public libraries to encourage literacy, according to the organization’s website.

A half-naked woman was allegedly tortured and chained up in the backyard of a Texas home for months — leading to the arrest of five people who allegedly starved and shot at the defenseless victim with BB guns.

The Austin Police Department responded to a home on the south side of the city at around 9 a.m. on Oct. 30 after a 911 call was made regarding a woman screaming for help and handcuffed to metal exercise equipment in the backyard, according to a press release.

Officers arrived to find the unnamed woman suffering from severe injuries, naked from the waist down, and shackled to a punching bag stand.

The first responders quickly sprang into action and attempted to free the woman, but “due to the conditions of the restraints,” they had to call in the Austin Fire Department to bring special equipment to cut through the metal.

“The woman showed signs of physical distress and had visible injuries consistent with prolonged restraint,” police said.

As they worked to free the woman, five adults inside the home noticed what was happening and tried to flee, but were immediately caught and detained.

Police also found two small children living at the home who were placed in the care of Child Protective Services for safety and support.

The suspects — Michelle Garcia, 51, Crystal Garcia, 21, Mache Carney, 32, Juan Pablo Castro, 30, and Maynard Lefevers, 21 — had allegedly held the victim captive for months, police said.

The victim told investigators that she’d been friends with Michelle Garcia, but stated that the group “at some point, they decided they no longer liked her,” and the five decided to keep her as a captive, according to an affidavit obtained by the Austin American-Statesman.

She said she was forced to live outside for weeks and beaten whenever she tried to flee. It’s unclear when the victim was taken captive and exactly how many months she was held.

Detectives said the woman was fed just one plate of food a day and shackled to a metal exercise stand — sometimes with both wrists locked behind her.

Michelle Garcia allegedly told investigators she limited the woman to one meal a day because she thought the victim had gotten “chunky.”

However, investigators said the woman appeared severely malnourished.

The victim also said that the night before being found, her pants slipped down and she “got in trouble.” She was then shot with a BB gun, cuffed to a backyard stand and left there half-naked overnight as “punishment” while temperatures plunged into the 40s, the affidavit revealed.

During her captivity, she sustained extensive injuries, including open wounds, severe swelling of the wrists, loss of tissue from her hands and feet, widespread scarring from BB gun pellets, and significant facial trauma.

After being transported to a local hospital, doctors determined her injuries matched weeks of torture and restraint. Scans also found a BB was lodged in her right eye.

Castro allegedly told police he shot the woman with an electric rifle-style BB gun because he “didn’t want to touch her.”

He also allegedly admitted that when he would get home from work, he would grab the BB gun from his closet, and “chase her around the yard,” expressing that he “f–king hates her,” according to the affidavit.

One of the children found at the home — a four-year-old boy identified as Castro’s son — said his dad shot the woman whenever she was “bad,” and that his mom, Carney, usually stood by and watched.

All five suspects were arrested and charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, injury to the elderly or disabled, and unlawful restraint. They are all currently locked up at the Travis County Jail on $305,000 bail.

Carney and Michelle Garcia return to court on Nov. 18 and 21, while Crystal Garcia, Castro, and Lefevers are set to appear on Dec. 15.

The case remains under investigation.