Crows Coffee opens with ribbon cutting ceremony
The coffee shop officially opens Friday, March 23
By Jill Draper and John Sharp
The first day of spring, March 20, is when Zach Moores hopes to open the doors to Crows Coffee at the Red Bridge Shopping Center, with a ribbon cutting ceremony on March 23 at 10 a.m.
He’s talking to local artists who will hang their works on the orange and blue walls, and he’s repurposing some tabletops from the former 75th Street Brewery near the Crows Coffee in Waldo where 10 new employees are training. He’s designed a lounge area with comfortable chairs and an entire wall of windows that open, accordion-style, onto a wrap-around patio at the northeast corner of the shopping center.
He’s excited.
“This one is going to be a little different. I have such a good feeling about this location,” he says. “I think the neighborhood has been deprived for a while and has a hunger for their own place.”
Moores said Crows will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week, [hours will vary the first few days of opening] but may stay open until around 10 or 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday if it has live music or open mike nights as it does at its current locations in Waldo and near UMKC.
Crows’ coffee roaster is Messenger Coffee Co. and the artisan coffees it serves are all from particular areas around the world, not blends of coffee from different areas. Crows also serves teas, its own fresh baked pastries, fruit, and breakfast burritos.
Moores said Crows does plan to apply for a license to serve beer and wine as it does at its other locations.
The facility will seat about 50 people inside, Moores said, and about another 20 on the patio.
Moores says each of his shops has a long, rectangular community table, but the table at the Red Bridge shop is the largest with room for 12 to 14 chairs. He always includes these among a variety of seating choices because they encourage customer interaction.
“As much as I do love coffee, I like hanging out with people and talking even more,” he says. “We’re a coffee shop, but I really look at this as a community space.”
This story appeared in the March 6 edition of the Martin City Telegraph and was updated on March 22.