New Wichita business will specialize in exotic plants, micro geckos — and coffee
Wichita is about to get a unique new business that offers exotic plants, micro geckos and coffee.
The coffee part of the business is already operating.
Samantha Gutierrez, 26, recently transitioned her pop-up coffee business – Cafe on Me — into a brick-and-mortar space at 115 S. Minneapolis. The shop is set up inside a building that, in mid-May, will also become home to a plant shop called Verdant Coven Plant Co., owned by friends Eva Troyer and Kelsey Kuecker.
“The plant girls,” as Gutierrez affectionately calls Troyer and Kuecker, met Gutierrez at a pop-up yoga event and loved her coffee. They were already planning their plant shop and had always hoped that it would also offer coffee.
“We really believe in community and helping people start up because we’ve been there,” Troyer said. “And so we invited her in, and she was so excited.”
The plant girls, though, weren’t quite ready to open their side of the business. So they suggested that Gutierrez get a head start. For nearly three weeks, Gutierrez has been selling her coffee drinks from a fold-up table inside the space, which was originally a horse barn but was recently converted into a retail space. Last week, she replaced the folding tables with a permanent coffee bar.
While Gutierrez sells her lattes and matcha drinks from the space, Troyer and Kuecker are continuing to put their plant shop together. Its grand opening event will happen May 15-17 and will include more than 20 vendors as well as food trucks.
When the shop is complete, it will offer high-end exotic aroids plus pottery and plant accessories. It will also conduct workshops where customers can build their own terrariums or make kokedama, which are artistic Japanese moss balls.
“I really care a lot about education and experiences,” Troyer said. “To be a good plant parent, you’ve got to learn a little bit. That’s something else we’re really trying to drive home there: Come hang out, come talk about plants, come learn something. Come sign up for a workshop and be a part of our community and collaborate with us.”
The shop will, come May, have seating areas both for workshop participants and for those who want to linger over coffee. But the two businesses won’t call the building on Minneapolis home for long. The three businesswomen have a plan to eventually move their joint business to a building called The Spot on Douglas, which is right around the corner.
The plant store and coffee shop will eventually move into the 6,000-square-foot ground-floor space numbered 1811 E. Douglas, which is directly underneath Kuecker’s second-story Broadleaf Yoga Studio. It opened in October.
The Douglas-facing space is undergoing renovations now, and when completed, it will have skylights that let in natural light for the plants and a staircase that connects the downstairs plant and coffee shop to the upstairs yoga studio. The idea is that people will be able to take yoga classes then go downstairs to enjoy coffee and plant shopping.
The back of the Douglas-facing space will provide overflow room for yoga classes. The front half will hold plants for sale and the coffee shop.
The building on Minneapolis, meanwhile, will become a space dedicated to plant workshops. It will still have its own coffee counter, too.
The owners are not sure how long they’ll be in the Minneapolis building before the renovation of the Douglas space is complete.
“It’s a big undertaking, so when it happens, it happens,” Troyer said.
Coffee shop dreams
In addition to her coffee business, Gutierrez also has a full-time job at a plastic surgery office and is attending school to become a physician’s assistant. She’s able to operate Cafe on Me with the help of four of her sisters. Two of them prepare baked goods for the shop — banana bread, cookies, etc. The other two help her make the drinks. The sisters are all learning together, she said.
Gutierrez started her business out of her home last summer, she said. Soon, she was being hired to provide coffee for pop-up events and openings. She was inspired to start her business by a love of coffee she developed when she was young and her grandmother would serve her a cup of warm coffee.
“It’s something you do in Hispanic culture,” Gutierrez said “And so just the love for it kind of grew. The name ‘Cafe on Me’ was inspired by something that people would always say: ‘Oh let’s go grab a coffee. It’s on me.’ And that just felt warm and generous.”
Cafe on Me is now open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
.jpg)