From Roasting To Retail: KC Coffee Roasters Will Open Their First Shop This Fall

OLEO Coffee owners Christopher Oppenhuis and Mark Sappington / Photo Courtesy of OLEO Coffee

Owners of a KC coffee roasting company plan to let their fair trade wholesale roasts take center stage at a new Crossroads coffee and retail shop.

Christopher Oppenhuis and Mark Sappington of Marcell Coffee, will be opening Take Care (419 E. 18th St. KCMO), a brick-and-mortar shop, in the former Chances Social spot at Grinders this fall.

Take Care will serve the business duo’s new KC coffee direct-to-consumer coffee roasting brand Oleo Coffee. They will be using beans grown on “single estate farms,” meaning the beans come from one place.

From farm-to-retail, the Oleo founders plan to be involved in every step of the coffee supply chain.

“All of the inherent quality begins at the farm level and ends with the consumer typically thousands of miles away,” says Oppenhuis and Sappington, both of whom have travelled to many of the estates and developed relationships with the farmers.

The two-thousand-square-foot, two-story space will feature a full espresso menu and drip coffee with cold coffee and tea on draft.

Homemade biscuits will be baked daily and served with seasonal preserves and flavored butters. 

The new coffee brand’s mission is “to create products and environments that genuinely represent the integrity and intentionality” that Oppenhuis and Sappington have witnessed first-hand on their international coffee buying adventures, they say.

The Oleo brand is a natural transition for the Marcell Coffee owners, who have been supplying local coffeeshops, like Novella, since 2019.

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