Churchill Coffee to close last corporate store

Through licensing agreements, Churchill will continue to provide its coffee beans to area grocery stores. CEO Cary Summers said that Churchill Coffee also would soon be available at two newly licensed locations in Blue Eye and Lebanon.

With its five-year lease at French Quarter, 1604 E. Republic Road, coming to an end this month, Summers said the time is right for the 10-year-old company’s shift away from retail and toward its flourishing wholesale business. The wholesale products are sold at about 200 outlets.

The Republic Road location’s last full day of operation will be May 15, and it will close early May 16, Summers said.

Springfield-based Churchill Coffee imports beans from about 20 countries and distributes its blends and “country of origin” coffees to dozens of food stores in a 12-state area that includes Missouri and most neighboring states, Summers said. Commercial accounts include Wal-Mart, Price Cutter, Country Mart and Harter House.

“We continue to grow the company servicing food stores … at a very rapid pace, plus we continue to license locations throughout the country,” Summers said.

One of those locations is a Churchill Coffee shop and restaurant at the 587-acre Morningside development in Blue Eye, a small town on the Missouri-Arkansas border near Table Rock Lake.

Morningside is the vision of Branson residents Jerry and Dee Crawford, who formed Morningside Development LLC and in 2005 purchased the property on Grace Chapel Road near the intersection of state highways 86 and 13. Once complete, the nearly $50 million development will have up to 1,800 homes and 4,000 condos and townhouses.

Churchill Coffee licensee Jerry Crawford said the 7,000-square-foot coffee shop – about twice the size of the Republic Road location – will be located in Morningside’s Main Street area and is expected to open in mid- to late June. Summers said Crawford has acquired much of the equipment from the store closing in southeast Springfield.

Stone County’s first full-service Churchill Coffee will have Internet capabilities, fireplaces and TVs to give the space a lounge-like feel, Crawford said, adding that interior painting and floor work is set to begin this week.

“We looked all over for good coffee, and Churchill’s is good coffee,” he said.

Churchill also is ironing out a licensing agreement with a partner in Lebanon who’s looking at selling the coffee in a convenience store, Summers said.

Churchill previously licensed stores or kiosks in downtown Springfield, the Springfield-Greene County Library Center and on the Missouri State University campus. The company also has licensed two coffee shops in Osaka, Japan, and another in Pine Bluff, Ark., according to its Web site. Churchill’s corporate coffeehouse in Springfield was previously located in the building on South Glenstone Avenue that now houses Rivals, a sports-themed restaurant, before moving to the French Quarter in 2003.

“We just started as a little business to provide quality coffee,” Summers said. “People just liked it, and we just started expanding.”

Closing the retail chapter after a decade of serving coffee to loyal customers won’t be easy, but Summers said Churchill Coffee’s employees simply needed to focus more time and energy on wholesale distribution to meet demand. The company is distributing about 300,000 pounds of beans a year, said Vice President Jay Larson.

“It certainly has been wonderful,” he said. “We really, really enjoyed the customers.”