FREDERICKTOWN – Sitting on cardboard-covered benches inside an addition to the old brick house on South Main Street, Karen Susi and Jenn Wilson warned against publishing a potential opening date for their new coffee shop, The Brickhouse Grind.
Better wait, they said, which makes sense considering the anticipation of Fredericktown’s first coffee shop in nearly a decade.
The shop will feature an art studio, where Wilson will teach classes, as well as a gift shop and a cozy seating area. There will be espressos and muffins and free wifi, all in the heart of Fredericktown, across the street from the municipal building and catty-cornered to the gazebo. The idea has Fredericktown buzzing, as over a thousand people have followed the shop’s progress on its Facebook page.
Under nearly every post, users from across Knox County have expressed their excitement.
“I don’t even live there and I can’t wait to come and see,” one user commented a week ago.
Susi and Wilson are cautious, though. Sure, this could be considered the ‘finishing touches’ stage of the project, but there’s still a lot to do, including hiring and training staff, before the doors can be opened to the public.
If the two owners have learned anything over the past 10 months, it’s how to be patient.
“But that’s not our personalities,” Wilson said. They broke into laughter.
***
Susi and Wilson can laugh now, but the mood was quite different last December.
They originally wanted to keep the old brick walls in the kitchen, which were likely well over a century old (the house was built in 1826). To do this, they first decided to replace the kitchen’s rotten floor joists, which sat atop six feet of dirt and rocks. Family members helped them dig out every inch.
They realized that the kitchen held the original ceiling, including heaps upon heaps of insulation. Family members banded together once again to suck the insulation out, which rose to Susi’s hips in a picture on the shop’s Facebook page.
But after all this work, one thing was left unchecked: the brick walls themselves.
Susi found that the base of every kitchen wall was crumbling away, ultimately rendering the room beyond repair. She and Wilson then had to make the gut-punch decision to tear the kitchen off all together and start from scratch.
“Oh, we’ve definitely had our moments where we’ve screamed, cried, you know,” Susi said.
While grappling with the kitchen, Susi and Wilson had to redesign architectural drawings several times to be sent to the state. One time, they had to account for the revamped kitchen. Another time, they forgot to include electricity and plumbing in the sketches. Each time things were redrawn, bureaucratic lag set the timetable back.
“Anytime you’re dealing with the state, you have all these delays, waiting for them to do all that,” Susi said. “So that has added so much time.”
By the time they were able to start working with contractors last spring, most had already nailed down summer projects. A project that began last October would have to be delayed even longer.
“We’ve just learned to be patient,” said Susi, humbly oversimplifying a turbulent process to which she and Wilson have dedicated the last 10 months of their lives.
The two have set ambitious goals since the beginning, eager to bring their vision to town. These goals have been chronicled on the shop’s Facebook page; a Mount Vernon News story from December teased a potential opening this spring; a Facebook post from April hinted at an opening in June; another one in May hinted at July; a reply to a user comment in July mentioned a potential opening in September.
Sure, the setbacks came with frustration. But to an extent, Susi and Wilson are thankful for them.
“We have had a terrible time of looking too far ahead,” Susi said. “Because you think of all the things that you have yet to do, the things that we have to worry about. So I just have to tell myself, ‘No, today’s not the day I can worry about it because there’s nothing I can do to prepare.’
“Whatever I can control now is the only thing I should be concentrated on, and that has been a huge lesson.”
***
Sitting in the future art studio last Wednesday afternoon, the sound of buzzsaws rang through the empty, polished space as Wilson’s eyes lit up.
She spoke about how she had already planned out art lessons for the next year, which she had time to do because of inspection delays. She said that wouldn’t have been possible if they’d opened in March.
“I feel like we’re very prepared,” she said.
This rings true for many aspects of the new business – with struggle has come not only patience, but also preparation for Susi and Wilson.
During the long winter, Susi was able to perfect recipes for muffins, scones, cookies, bagels and cupcakes, tinkering with ingredients to come up with the purest product.
The two have also taken time to order unique products for the gift shop, which will sit between the main lobby and the art studio. They have set up their website and chronicled their journey through Facebook, letting things roast slowly as anticipation builds to a crescendo.
Recently, Susi and Wilson have spent mornings delivering their new baked goods to area businesses and offices, hoping to build a relationship with the community they will serve. On Wednesday, Susi had taken some of her muffins to the fire department and the bank. They’ve taken them to Fredericktown’s schools, which has been a blessing and a curse – now Wilson can barely make it down the hallway without students bombarding her for sweet treats.
“That’s just who we both are and I think that’s why we gravitate to each other to work together, because we just like to treat people, to make them feel special and with respect, and we did,” Wilson said.
“And Karen’s blueberry muffins are really good.”
The community outreach hasn’t stopped with potential customers, though. It has extended to potential competitors as well, although Susi and Wilson don’t see it that way.
Susi and Wilson say they frequently stop for coffee at places like Happy Bean Coffee Shop in Mount Vernon or The Blonde Robin in Danville. Coffee shop owners in Knox County apparently share a similar mindset when it comes to competition.
“The lady from Happy Bean said, ‘The way I look at it is, there’s business enough here for everybody,’” Susi said. “And that’s exactly the kind of attitude we should have.”
The owner of North Main Cafe in Mount Vernon shared wisdom with Wilson on the process of opening up her shop.
“Don’t rush it,” Wilson recalled her saying. “People are going to want you to rush it. But it is worth the wait.”
It’s safe to say that the vibe of Knox County’s newest coffee house will be different from the rest, though. It will be focused on not only fresh-brewed espressos and flavorful muffins, but also the art of self-expression.
“A lot of schools, they just really push the sports,” Wilson said. “So a lot of these kids that have these talents, or just a passion for art, they feel abnormal or like they don’t fit in. Holy smokes, they will fit in here.”
***
While Susi and Wilson grew up worlds apart, they both share a similar passion.
Susi, raised in Mansfield, and Wilson, a New York native, found each other in Fredericktown a few years back. Wilson’s husband worked with Susi and both women shared art at The Brickhouse Emporium, an art shop that inhabited the same building they would eventually make their own.
When The Brickhouse Emporium closed in May 2017, the duo decided that they needed to keep it going. But they had a bigger vision – to add coffee (and eventually double the size of the shop by adding an art studio).
They saw a need and they filled it, simple as that.
“That’s one of the biggest questions parents would say, ‘Where can I go for a good cup of coffee?,’” said Wilson, who has children in the Fredericktown school system. “They’re like, ‘I just wish there was a place to get espresso,’ and there is nothing here.
“And that’s how most businesses start – there’s a need for something.”
In Fredericktown, Susi and Wilson feel there is also a need for artistic expression, especially for the community’s youth.
“I don’t think arts and music are given enough time in school,” Susi said. “I know when I was in high school, that’s all I cared about. I didn’t care about any of the other stuff. And you just get such a little portion of it and you don’t get enough time to do the things you want to do or learn the things you want to learn. So this is the perfect opportunity.”
Susi grew up a swimmer but said she found her true passion in art class. Wilson participated in sports as well, but attended a school in Buffalo where she took three art classes per year. She said that right now, her children take one art class per year for two years at Fredericktown.
“If it wasn’t for my art teacher, I probably wouldn’t have gone to art school, I probably wouldn’t have been able to be creative and let that out, and I wouldn’t be able to be the person that I am today,” Wilson said. “My kids love art and they will get it every time they get a chance. But they just don’t have the opportunity to take any more classes.”
Wilson’s new art studio will feature high quality canvases and brushes, along with electrical outlets that run along the walls so kids can learn on tablets and other devices. Wilson is excited to teach the next generation of local artists, giving the community’s youth an opportunity to express themselves in ways they might not have been able to before.
Susi also plans on holding open mic sessions on the shop’s porch for local youngsters who want to try their musical talents out in front of a crowd. For those who have first posted their work on YouTube, this will be a chance to perform in front of a live audience.
“My nephew, he can play any instrument that you put him in front of. He is amazing. But he was one of the shyest kids that I ever knew and just didn’t want to perform in front of other people,” Susi said. “But if he had something like this, where there’s all these kids that are doing the exact same thing and they’re all doing it for the first time, he would’ve done it.”
As another work day comes to a close on 10 South Main Street, Susi and Wilson drip with enthusiasm as they tell their story. 10 grueling months later, they’re still in love with their mission.
Despite the need for their shop in Fredericktown, however, the question that looms over every budding business still applies in this case: Will this work?
After all, Susi and Wilson said that there had been a coffee shop in Fredericktown seven or eight years ago, but it folded after six months due to leasing issues. Both said that the place was popular and that its close was “a very sad story.” Wilson said that the owners had even remodeled the place before opening it.
And The Brickhouse Emporium, a popular art outlet for the community, also closed after less than a year in business.
One might assume that this history would intimidate Susi and Wilson, so the question was posed: Does this scare you?
“No,” Wilson said firmly, smacking her fist. “Bring it.”
Maybe it’s the months of preparation and relationship building that give Susi and Wilson the confidence to not only keep going, but to make their shop a success.
In the end, the delays and frustration and prep work have become a part of the mission, and will likely only enhance the final product. Looking back on things now, as they close in on an opening date, Susi and Wilson wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“We have embraced it,” Wilson said. “At first, I was holding on so tightly and it was becoming extremely stressful. But I let it go. I have made such awesome memories this summer. We would’ve made our own here, but I said, ‘No, this is going to be fantastic.’
“And I think if you have the outlook that, ‘OK, let’s just make the best of the situation,’ it really helps. It’ll happen when it happens.”
Knox Community Hospital proudly supports the vibrant pulse of our community by sponsoring the Life & Culture section on Knox Pages, celebrating the stories and experiences that make our region unique.