When I contemplated finally opening my own coffee shop I spent a tremendous amount of time looking for the right location. I had a lot of time to consider whether I wanted Blue Ox to be in a high foot-traffic sort of environment or tucked into a neighborhood. Personally, I’ve never enjoyed crowds and couldn’t imagine spending all my working hours in the throngs of mall crowds. The decision to seek out a cozy neighborhood made itself known to me pretty quickly. My son was barely six months old when he and I began the serious searching for that right spot. We had a lot of adventures on the snowy Minneapolis streets on our quest for the perfect little storefront.
Minneapolis, and the Twin Cities in general, has some fantastic communities nestled back in it’s tangle of tree-lined streets, but the one I always came back to was an area that many people won’t visit because of it’s colorful history; Powderhorn. Technically, Blue Ox is in the Central Neighborhood, but the intersection of East 38th & Chicago Ave. is keystone in that it joins The Powderhorn, Central, Bankcroft and Bryant neighborhoods. And they are each unique and colorful in their own right.
Community activism is at the root of what makes neighborhoods great. These neighborhoods are no exception. I feel fortunate to have found such a great location on Chicago Ave.
Blue Ox is a couple weeks from opening and we’ve already had a tremendous response to the shop via our Facebook page. It’s heartwarming to know something as simple as coffee can make people take notice.
We plan to be open before the end of July.
Follow us on Twitter @blueoxcoffeeco
or
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/blueoxcoffeeco
to keep up with the progress.
