Higher Grounds Coffee

Good coffee and atmosphere. The scones are yummy. I liked the lemon one especially. The raspberry and blueberry ones were great also. The texture and taste are perfect.

This is one of the best coffee shows in Northern Illinois, and I am including Chicago. The atmosphere is extremely inviting and has a warm energy about it. Now let’s talk about the drinks and food! Higher Grounds has better quality coffee drinks and amazing choice of flavors. The breakfast sandwiches are some of the best I have ever had. Chicken salad is simply brilliant! Higher Grounds is a gem hidden in Freeport!

Awesome local coffee shop! Support your local shops and go get an awesome chai latte from higher grounds!

The frozen blended speedy Gonzalez with soy milk is my favorite! It’s made with Mexican cocoa and expresso so you get the energy without any crashing!

This is a quaint little coffee shop– a good place to cozy up with a book for awhile. The holiday special coffee was pretty tasty too! Freeport is full of nice people, so of course staff and customers were nothing but friendly. I sat for quite some time by the fire reading a book in a comfy chair. If I had to pick any complaint– it’s holiday music. I prefer to read to music without lyrics, but that’s just me being picky… And honestly it’s December in the Midwest and Bible Belt, what did I expect? Stop on in for a cozy afternoon coffee by the fire!

This was my first experience here, but I went in with an open mind. Whenever I read Unilocal reviews that are either really high, or really low, I tend to throw out the high and low and pay attention to the ones in the middle. (One guy even tipped his hand early that his review would be biased — and it was.)
I found the coffee to be excellent, the help friendly, and the atmosphere warm and inviting. Now I know where to get my morning coffee in Freeport!
Another review says the food is so awful that I can’t wait to try it. I suspect it’s going to be really good! I’ll let you know.
By the way, I’ve also noticed that whatever music is in the background, someone isn’t going to like it. That’s proven in these reviews. As far as I’m concerned, as long as it isn’t hip-​hop or Sousa marches, I don’t really care. I do like it better if a place plays classical and then I’m hooked.

I LOVE this place! It’s so fun to go on a rainy day and curl up in one of their arm chairs, get soy latte (yum!), and read the New York Times!

We tried out Higher Grounds yesterday. It has such a welcoming environment and the lovely fire crackling away and the free wifi spot is going to make this a favorite place for us to go. I also want to mention that we had a goof on our order. It’s always embarrassing to have to mention this to management. I’d ordered the tuscan chicken panini and somehow they had gotten it mixed up and what arrived was a tuna sandwich. We have two children under three so it took me longer than it usually would to figure out what was wrong with my sandwich and let them know about it. Which says a lot because I got like 4 bites in and I normally HATE tuna. For a tuna fish sandwich, that was like the best one I’ve ever had. So if you’re a tuna fan, totally try it out.
Anyway, I took it up and the management didn’t even question, they just took it and exchanged it with what I had ordered. They didn’t make me feel guilty or anything, jsut apologized and then got the right one. Then later, they even brought me a little card saying I can have a free drink on them at some time. Now, I really respect that in a business owner. That is really taking care of your customers. This is the reason for 5 stars.
One of the other reviewers who has some Starbucks snobbery, said the food was too salty. ??? Well, I must like my salt because I thought I could have salted my sandwich a tad more, but it was still yummy. I will totally have to go back and try out their supposedly too salty breakfast snacks.
But we really loved the ambiance and the service was great. We will be back again and again.

I am a die hard Starbucks gril, so when Higher Grounds opened up, I was excited something resembling a cute coffee shop was in Freeport. FYI i’m not from Freeport, my parents relocated here recently. Anyway, now that i have established i am NOT from this town… in general, the latte’s are ok, and the food is gross. They can’t even make a basic crossaint, and their warm, savory breakfast options tasted like they had ½ lb of salt mixed in. Overall, pretty gross food, decent coffee drinks, and a pretty unknowledgable staff. I’ll stick to my Starbucks, thanks.

Nice place to grab a cup of java. I enjoy the speciality drinks, like flavored mochas and lattes. It would be nice if they had more/​longer weekend hours.

I’m always shocked when Freeport has something moderately nice. In the past year since I’ve been visiting here, I’ve learned to lower my expectations considerably.
But hello — what have we here? A coffee shop? A comfortable, cutely decorated, NICE coffee shop? Well, slap my ass and call me Sally! A place to sip something hot and curl up with your laptop, right here in Freeport. I had a skim chai latte, which was great, and my boyfriend seems to enjoy their sugar-​free mochas. And the bathroom was spotlessly clean (this is very important). Nice to see the area isn’t totally dominated by chain restaurants!
Wi-​Fi is free with your purchase.

For a coffee place in town, it’s not bad. The service in the drive through, however, needs to pick up the pace. I have never been inside, because I am always on the run when I am in town but I would assume its a little quicker in there.
Last time we stopped in, it took about 5 minutes for a Pumpkin Spice Latte to be made. I mean, seriously? Then someone came to the window and asked if we had our order taken yet. And we did — when we were at the speaker — 5 minutes ago!
Either way, its still probably the best option in town.

The coffee is awful. If you buy whole bean coffee of a decent quality and brew it at home it is a dozen times better than Higher Grounds coffee. I’ve tried lattés, cappuccino and just plain coffee with sugar and they are all far too bitter. At home I drink Schuil whole bean and all their varieties have unique flavors, none of which are half as bitter as this coffee joint. And to drink their variety of bitter coffee drinks you pay almost as much as Starbucks.
Their food is about what you would expect for a coffee house but the only reason I can think that many enjoy this coffee joint is because it’s the only one on that side of town. There are others downtown which are far superior in taste of coffee and service. Many of the baristas think they are too cool for you and it shows.

I’m a big fan of the Higher Grounds coffee shop in Freeport because it is perfectly placed. Not because of the nearby mall or the otherwise bleak commercial strip that is Hwy 26 on the south side of town. No, I love this coffee shop because it is located along the highway at the exact spot that my mother and I are looking for a refill. My mother’s side of the family is in the Peoria area and we’ve been driving from Wisconsin via Freeport for as long as I’ve been alive. Considering how reliant we’ve become on getting our mugs refilled at Higher Grounds I’m not entirely sure how we managed prior to its existence. Maybe it was gas station coffee, or something equally as horrible.
The initial sighting was a few years back, when my mother, sister and I were coming back from the relatives. Everyone was tired and I’d assumed driving duties in Sterling. As we came through Freeport my mom suggested getting coffee at McDonald’s but I would prefer fatigue to that, so we kept going up the hill. As we drove past my mother remarked that she thought she saw a coffee shop, but we didn’t turn around to look. Several months later we were driving down to IL again and this time I saw the place in time to turn in. It was a bit after 1 and my father was hungry. While the rest of us got coffee he ordered soup and a sandwich which made him quite happy. We didn’t stay long, but the place seemed warm and inviting. On about every subsequent trip we’ve taken through Freeport we’ve made a stop at the Higher Grounds shop, and I’ve got nothing bad to say about the place. The coffee is always excellent and the service is quick. We’ve never used the drive-​through window but it’s there if we were in that big of a hurry. I’m happy that there is a place of such quality in Freeport.

A tasteful and comfortable interior, perfectly balancing table space and in-​between space, redeems the preposterous strip-​mall location, but the fact that Higher Grounds isn’t open evenings (except Fridays) is a significant minus. The coffee is as high-​quality as you’ll find anywhere, and the baristas are well trained. A gas fireplace adds atmosphere in the winter. The menu features a variety of sandwiches. Scones are snack-​size and not too heavy, though some are a bit dry; the orange chocolate chip is especially good. (In another life, it might have been a biscotto.) Wi-​fi is free. The ambient music, sadly, is a classic rock radio station. Would Madeleine Peyroux or Seu Jorge cause Freeporter heads to explode?
UPDATE, 8÷19÷08: So it’s not always classic rock. Sometimes it’s «smooth jazz,» sometimes even a «coffeehouse acoustic» XM station. But it’s classic rock often enough to be annoying.