Road work forces temporary closure of popular coffee shop; Owner makes a quick pivot
Don’t get her wrong: Joanna Kilgore is happy about the road construction happening in front of her MOXI Junction coffee house, which has operated for eight years at 319 S. Park Ave in Maize.
When it’s finished, it will be “awesome for Maize and really good for me,” she said.
At the moment, though, that road construction — which has been going on since May — has completely blocked access to her shop, and this week, she’s had to close it.
But Kilgore, who says that the ability to pivot is essential for business owners in 2022, has come up with an alternative to keep her customers caffeinated and her employees working.
She’s just purchased a yellow mobile coffee truck designed to keep her business afloat while the construction continues, and she’s given it a catchy name: MOXI Mini.
This week, the truck has been set up in the parking lot of the Ace Hardware at 5204 N. Maize Road, not far from the coffee shop. She’s planning to keep it there for the time being and to open it from 7 a.m. to noon-ish Mondays through Saturdays, serving her shop’s popular coffee beverages. (She isn’t able to offer bakery items from the truck, though.)
Starting next week, she hopes to also take it to the Maize City Park Tuesday through Saturday afternoons and offer iced beverages and sno cones.
Her shop likely will be able to reopen sometime next week, Kilgore said, but she plans to keep MOXI Mini going and will take it to events or set it up around Maize.
The road construction has been quite a challenge for the business, which started in 2014 when several moms of special needs kids banded together to open a business where their children could work. It’s set up in a charming converted house and has earned lots of fans in Maize and beyond.
The road project, which when finished will make the street safer for pedestrians and bikers, started in May, and since then, Kilgore’s faced several days where her power or water have been cut off. Her drive-through window became inaccessible at some point during the project, and she had to move it to a different spot.
“It’s really hard,” she said. “I can’t even impress upon you how hard. I thought I was going to have to close for good.”
She’d been searching for a coffee trailer for months, but the impending inaccessibility to her shop forced her to accelerate the search. She found one in Oklahoma and got it a week ago, and the Maize health department helped her get it quickly licensed.
She set the truck up on Tuesday and opened it on Wednesday, accepting a kind invitation from Ace Hardware to use their parking lot.
Now, she and her employees are “learning a whole new business on the fly.”
Customers have been finding the truck, and though some are frustrated that it doesn’t have bakery items, most understand that the staff is doing the best it can with a difficult situation, Kilgore said.
“I’m telling you, people can be very kind,” she said. “The businesses and everybody are being as supportive as they can.”
This story was originally published July 21, 2022 at 11:15 AM.
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