New coffee business opens in East Lawrence; south Iowa Street retailer files for bankruptcy

photo by: Mike Yoder

The owners of The Bourgeois Pig have opened a new coffee roasting business in production space at 900 New Jersey St., the former Kansas Key Press building, pictured on Friday, Feb. 5, 2016.

The folks that have brought you the popular downtown business The Bourgeois Pig have a new venture, but, no, it doesn’t involve another coffee shop, or a Marxist farm animal. The husband and wife duo, though, have started a new coffee roasting business in East Lawrence.

Although some of you may have been hoping for a sister coffee shop for The Bourgeois Pig — perhaps The Proletariat Porcupine — owners Ryan and Amy Pope have gone in a different direction for their new venture. The company has rented production space at 900 New Jersey St. — the former Kansas Key Press building –and recently opened Repetition Coffee.

Repetition roasts about 15 varieties of coffee and currently sells the coffee at The Pig, which the couple continues to own, at The Merc, at Lawrence’s Alchemy Coffee, and a few other locations around Lawrence. But Ryan Pope said Repetition is planning to soon expand into the Kansas City market.

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“We’re not sure how large the business will become,” Ryan said. “We want to make sure it doesn’t become so big that we can’t control it.”

But Ryan said the Kansas City market is a lucrative one, and he’s finalizing deals with several well-known coffee sellers in the metro.

The idea for Repetition came after Ryan and Amy moved to Paris in 2011. While Amy attended grad school, Ryan began working in the specialty coffee scene in Paris, including at the trendsetting La Cafeotheque, which I think is French for “Honey, I spent the rent money on coffee.” (My French may be rusty.)

“We really got into coffee while we were there because we really worked with some pros,” Ryan said.

Gearing up for our demo tomorrow @themerccoop /// We'll be serving coffee from 11-2, come check us out! Free #coffeefor2…

Posted by Repetition Coffee on Friday, January 15, 2016

Repetition has coffee varieties from Burundi, Mexico, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and elsewhere. Currently, the business is doing a lot of work with Brazilian coffee beans after Ryan and Amy took a recent trip to Brazil and made connections with a fine-coffee growing family. Ryan said working closely with farms is a big part of the company’s strategy.

“We really like to focus on micro lots, which is like the top coffee from farms around the world,” Ryan said. “We’re roasting and selling specialty coffee. We’re more on the higher end of things.”

Although the pair doesn’t have any plans to use its new space at 900 New Jersey for a coffee shop, it is hosting an event for the public to come see the operations and to shop. From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Feb. 11, the company will host an event it calls Treat. It will be a pre-Valentine’s Day “sip and shop” event where folks can sample coffee and buy items from about a dozen food, drink and art vendors that will be on site.

As for The Bourgeois Pig, 6 E. Ninth St., Ryan said the new venture isn’t resulting in changes to that popular downtown destination.

In other news and notes from around town:

• Keep your eyes open for possible changes at Hancock Fabrics at 27th and Iowa streets. The national fabric and craft retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this week and has plans to close at least 70 stores.

But thus far, the Lawrence store is not on the list of those to be closed, according to an employee at the local store, which was open this morning. Media reports, however, suggest the entire company is at risk. The Mississippi-based retailer has about 250 stores, and its bankruptcy filing company officials said they were open to selling the entire chain of stores.

According to this Bloomberg article, the company is taking bids for its stores through early March. The article also notes that a liquidation company is serving as a backup bidder, which suggests the company may close stores and sell their inventory if a buyer for the chain doesn’t emerge.

Hancock filed for bankruptcy protection in 2007, but emerged a year later, according to the Bloomberg article. The company, though, has faced increased competition from larger chains such as Wal-Mart and Michaels, and also has struggled as the demand for fabric and sewing supplies have decreased.

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