Pull out of Springfield Village onto Springfield Farm Road, cut past West Forsyth High School, and within a few minutes you're merging onto Lewisville-Clemmons Road, the corridor that does most of the heavy lifting for daily errands in this part of the Triad. If you've made that drive in the last couple of months, you've probably noticed something has changed at two spots that used to blend into the background.
One is a familiar building with an unfamiliar sign. The other is a construction site that wasn't there before. Together they tell a more interesting story than "two new coffee shops," and it's worth fifteen minutes to understand what's actually happening on a road most of us drive without thinking twice.
The Sign Changed Before the Building Did
For years, the coffee stand on Lewisville-Clemmons Road operated as Clutch Coffee Bar, a drive-thru chain that got its start in Mooresville back in 2018. It wasn't a startup taking a flyer on the location. It was an established regional brand with locations across the Triad, including spots in Greensboro and Winston-Salem, that had already built a customer habit at that specific address.
In January 2026, that changed. Dutch Bros Coffee, the Tempe, Arizona-based drive-thru chain, announced it was acquiring Clutch Coffee Bar outright, a deal that gave Dutch Bros its first footprint anywhere in the Triad. The Clemmons store closed temporarily for rebranding and reopened under the Dutch Bros name, part of a wave of conversions that also touched Clutch's Winston-Salem and Greensboro locations. By summer, national coverage was already listing Clemmons among the markets where Dutch Bros had opened its doors.
Here's the part that matters if you live nearby: Dutch Bros didn't build new. It bought a business that was already working. That's a different kind of bet than breaking ground on an empty lot, and it tells you something about how much foot traffic that stretch of road had already proven it could support before Dutch Bros ever showed up.
The Newcomer Betting on the Same Stretch
Less than two months after that reopening, something else started going up a half mile down the same road. Seven Brew, the Arkansas-founded drive-thru chain that's grown from a single Rogers stand in 2017 to more than 700 locations nationwide as of 2026, began construction at 2600 Lewisville-Clemmons Road. The site sits at the intersection with Old Glory Road, next to Five Guys and directly across from the Sonic Drive-In, according to reporting from the Winston-Salem Journal. No opening date has been announced yet.
What's notable is the choice of location. Seven Brew isn't filling a gap in an underserved area. It's building within walking distance of a coffee shop that just changed hands, on a stretch of road that already had two established food anchors in Five Guys and Sonic holding down the corners. That's not a chain hedging its bets on unproven ground. That's a chain reading the same traffic counts, the same curb cuts, and the same commuter patterns that convinced Dutch Bros to buy in rather than build from scratch, and deciding there's room for a second bet a few hundred yards away.
For a resident of Springfield Village, that reshapes what looked like a coincidence into something closer to a signal. When two national chains converge on the same quarter mile within a couple of months of each other, it usually means the corridor already proved itself, not that both companies got lucky with the same guess.
What Two Different Drive-Thrus Actually Mean for Your Commute
The two chains aren't identical, and the difference is worth knowing before you default to whichever one you see first.
Seven Brew runs a format built entirely around speed and no indoor seating. Locations typically use a double-lane drive-thru with staff taking orders outside on handheld devices before you ever reach a window, aiming for service in about three minutes. The menu leans into a small set of signature drinks, the "7 Originals," alongside energy drinks, teas, and shakes, all customizable into more than 20,000 possible combinations.
Dutch Bros built its national reputation on a similar drive-thru-first model, but with its own rewards app, a rotating menu of seasonal drinks, and a brand culture built around its "broistas." As of the third quarter of 2025, the chain reported 1,081 locations across 24 states, making it one of the most recognized names in drive-thru coffee everywhere except, until this year, the Triad.
Quick reference for the corridor as it stands right now:
- Dutch Bros — converted from Clutch Coffee Bar, reopened in 2026, Lewisville-Clemmons Road
- Seven Brew — under construction as of late August 2026, 2600 Lewisville-Clemmons Road, at the Old Glory Road intersection, next to Five Guys, across from Sonic
- Distance between them — about a half mile
- Seven Brew opening date — not yet announced
That last line matters if you're the type who plans a coffee run around a new opening. There's no date to circle yet, but the framing on the lot suggests this isn't a long way off.
Reading the Corner Like the Road Is Telling You Something
It's easy to drive past construction cones and register them as background noise. But a national chain doesn't sink money into a build a half mile from a competitor's recent win without a reason. Retailers who do site selection for a living look at exactly the things this stretch of Lewisville-Clemmons Road already has: consistent car counts, an intersection that's easy to enter and exit, and neighbors like Five Guys and Sonic that already do the work of pulling people off the main road and into that specific pocket.
What that means in practice for anyone living off Springfield Farm Road is that this particular half mile has quietly become one of the more contested stretches of retail real estate in Clemmons, not because of anything dramatic, but because enough commuters already run past it every morning to make two national coffee chains want a piece of the same short block.
None of this changes how West Forsyth traffic flows on a Friday night or how far Tanglewood Park is from your driveway. But it does mean the errand list for a Springfield Village household just picked up a genuine choice where there used to be one option, and it's worth knowing the story behind both signs the next time you're sitting in that left-turn lane deciding which one to pull into.
If you're weighing what a corner like this says about the broader pulse of the neighborhood, or you just want someone who tracks this stuff for a living, Banner Team Properties has been paying attention to the Triad's daily rhythms for a long time. Call or message the Banner Team, let's talk about your next move.
