This Wichita coffee shop is about to close, but the space might not be vacant for long
A 5-year-old west-side coffee shop is about to close now that its owner has decided her calling is elsewhere.
But there’s a good chance it will reopen right away with new owners, a new name and a new menu.
Ecclesia Coffee & Community, which Rochelle Stroh opened in January 2016 at 7130 W. Maple, is in its final weeks of business. Stroh recently announced via social media that Dec. 17 will be the shop’s last day and that she’s moving to either Chicago or the Pacific Northwest.
But one of her staffers — David Vandiver — hopes to reopen the shop, which is in the same strip center at Maple and Ridge that holds Chipotle and McAlister’s Deli. He’s teaming with his fiance, Madelyn Norris, to open a new shop in the space, which they plan to call The Neighborhood Coffee Shop.
Vandiver said he started working at Ecclesia in August and loved its mission of bringing the community together. He’d worked in a similar business in Hays called Breath Coffee House when he and Norris were students at Fort Hays State University.
When Stroh announced her plans to close, Vandiver expressed interest in buying the equipment and taking over the lease. There’s just one problem: He and Norris need about $50,000 to make it work, and because they’re both recent college graduates, they’re not having luck securing a bank loan.
Recently, they launched a GoFundMe online fundraiser to try to crowdsource some of the money. It’s up to $520 so far. But Vandiver said that he’s found some other avenues to raise money and is optimistic he’ll be able to come up with enough before the deadline, which is Ecclesia’s last day in business.
Though they’d make some additions to the menu and change the name, the couple would adhere to the mission Stroh started with the shop — to connect people over coffee and to help them learn how to communicate again. They want to use the shop in its off hours for small groups of people to meet up for discussions, Vandiver said, and he’d want the shop to be a place where “all the churches in the community can collide.”
“It’s just this weird feeling that this is something we’re supposed to be doing,” Vandiver said. “We feel led into this.”
Their hope is to have his new sign up and reopen the shop no more than a week after Ecclesia’s Dec. 17 closing.
I’ll keep you updated on the couple’s progress.
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 10:58 AM.
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