Bringing The Coffee Experince To Uptown Wadesboro

It is probably an exaggeration to suggest that AnsonEDP, the Anson County Chamber of Commerce,  Uptown Wadesboro and the Anson County Tourism Development Authority brought coffee to Uptown Wadesboro--after all, a cup of joe has been readily available at several convenience stores and fast food restaurants along the US 74 corridor on the fringes of uptown--but those organizations are absolutely responsible for bringing the coffee "experience" to the community.

"An Uptown coffee shop has been a priority of the Chamber since I started working here, " said Shelby Emrich, president and CEO of the Anson County Chamber of Commerce, and we are so excited to finally see it happen. This is going to be a game-changer for Wadesboro."

The "this" she speaks of is Speckled Paw Coffee, which opened this morning to a packed house in the new REV Uptown facility on West Wade Street. The REV project is an innovative concept in rural development which combines the coffee house with offices for the partner organizations, a coworking space and a business incubator.

"The community lacked an uptown gathering place for business and professional people in the mornings and afternoons," according to Julian Swittenburg, director of Uptown Wadesboro, "and that fact detracted from the livability and sense of community in the uptown. There was no place for casual business meetings or a couple of friends to get together over a cup of coffee. The owners of Speckled Paw get that they aren't really in the coffee business, they are in the community business."

Those owners are Kyle and Myra Poplin.  The Wadesboro location is their second, coming about a year after they opened their first store in Mt. Gilead. "Once people saw the positive impact a downtown coffee shop had on the tiny town of Mt. Gilead, other communities in the region came calling, wanting us to open in their town, too. We decided to locate store #2 in Wadesboro because the town's leaders seemed to get what we wanted to do and seemed really invested in our success here. Shelby and John and Julian and Louis have been super to work with. We went from concept to open in about six weeks. I don't know that there is another group of community leaders in North Carolina who could have made that happen."

"The store opened at 7:30 this morning and when I got here about 7:35 the place was packed, and there has been a steady stream of traffic all day. We couldn't have asked for a better reception," said  AnsonEDP's John Marek, whose organization is the project's developer and financier. Along with Speckled Paw, the REV development has also announced Swedish automotive supplier Borgstena and local graphics design firm Intelligraphics as incubator tenants. "We've been blown away by the interest in this space from businesses of all kinds, from a CBD oil producer to a cyber-security firm. If anything, we may have underestimated the demand."

Despite the "soft" opening of Speckled Paw and the almost fully subscribed incubator and coworking space, the REV facility is still a work-in-progress; some of the furniture, including the outdoor seating, is backordered, the new awning won't be installed until mid-month, and The Anson County Welcome Center, which will inhabit a corner of the coffee space, has yet to  be set up. And, in truth, the concept will be continually tweaked as the needs of the clients and community evolve.