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Tag: Grace Coffee

  • Blythewood TC/PC meeting begins with dinner, ends with coffee confrontation

    BLYTHEWOOD – What promised to be an informative though less than riveting review Monday evening of the purposes, responsibilities and processes of the town’s boards and commissions by Town Administrator Brian Cook, ended with a disgruntled former coffee vendor verbally holding the council and planning commission hostage for close to half an hour.

    The evening began with boxed meals brought in for councilmen, commissioners and town hall staff prior to a 6 p.m. joint meeting of council members and planning commissioners.

    Beyer

    It was not until the public comment segment at the end of the public meeting that the fireworks began. That’s when Matt Beyer, owner of Grace Coffee, a former coffee vendor in the town, stepped up to the podium.

    While assuring the panel right off that what he was about to say was not a threat, some at the dias and in the audience, said afterward it appeared to be so.

    “As my dad often said, we can do this the easy way or the hard way – and this is not a threat – but there’s a short version and a long version. I’m prepared to do both,” Beyer told council firmly.

    In an almost 25-minute soliloquy, Beyer tried to convince the panel to reinstate his coffee trailer’s previous grandfathered status in the town. He explained that he is leaving his Lexington location, and the new owners of the former Bits and Pieces business at 208 Main Street would like to have Grace Coffee come back to that location. The owners, according to Town Hall, are Theresa McKenrick and her husband Rich McKenrick who is also a member of the town’s planning commission.

    Beyer initially launched into what he described as the short version of his request, detailing his side of a complex story that was reported in The Voice off and on over two and a half years. The last story printed in February, 2019 after Beyer moved from the grandfathered location in the parking lot of Bits and Pieces at 208 Main Street to a new location on Wilson Blvd. (See Grace Coffee FB post stirs up community and Grace Coffee opens outside town from Nov. 2018. )

    In telling his version of the story, Beyer quoted the town administrator, the Voice, the former and current mayors, planning commissioners, town council members and others to make his case that while he left his grandfathered location, he should be allowed by the town to return to it and continue doing business there.

    But, according to Town Hall, Beyer’s move from the location nullified the grandfather clause. Beyer, however, said his status still stands and he only needs confirmation of that from council.

    “I’m not here today to debate what has already been debated for two years. I’m here seeking affirmation of what has already been determined by the planning commission, the board of architectural review and the former mayor himself,” Beyer said. “I’ve got written documentation of this that I am willing to share if we need to, but for the sake of time – again, easy way, hard way – if council would like to make a motion, a simple memo or a motion to affirm the decision already made to allow us to operate as we once did for two years, we can move on, get home much earlier tonight.”

    Jumping in at one point as Beyer caught his breath, Mayor Brian Franklin tried unsuccessfully to end Beyer’s presentation.

    “You make a good point, but we cannot take action tonight. It’s not on the agenda,” Franklin said. “But we heard what you said.”

    Beyer was undaunted in his quest and continued.

    “Okay, well if there’s no action, then I’m just going to continue,” Beyer said as he proceeded.

    “Uh, you’re pretty much…” Franklin broke in. “We get the point. Is there anything…” Beyer interrupted and forged on.

    “Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely, and I’ll be brief,” Beyer said as he continued for another 15 minutes to recount events from two years ago as well as his multiple unsuccessful attempts to convince town hall to confirm his side of the issue.

    Eighteen minutes into his speech, Beyer insisted that he was not trying to be difficult.

    “I’ve chosen to keep this issue private for a week, ‘cause I don’t want to do this.” He added after he got no response, “If you want to go to town council we can do this and then all of a sudden, the whole community will know. So I’m here tonight to try to resolve this one last time before it goes public. And I’m just saying there’s a lot of people around here that love our coffee.”

    Asked by The Voice if he is considering a lawsuit against the town on the issue, Beyer said, “no comment.”

    After more than 24 minutes, Beyers ended his plea with, “I’m asking one time that you just affirm. I just need a memo.”

  • Grace Coffee opens outside town

    BLYTHEWOOD – Grace Coffee Company has moved its coffee trailer to a new location just outside of Blythewood and is open for business.

    Owner Matt Beyer posted a video last week inviting his former customers to find the turquoise and white trailer, which is now located at 10324 Wilson Boulevard.

    “We’ll be giving away free coffee and merchandise,” Beyer said in the video of their grand opening event last Saturday.

    Beyer’s coffee wagon moved out of Blythewood during the fall when the grandfathered status he sought in a new location from the town government was refused.

  • Grace Coffee FB post stirs up community

    BLYTHEWOOD – “The Town Government is shutting us down,” Matt Beyer, the owner of Grace Coffee posted on Facebook Thursday, Oct. 25. “Give the Mayor a call and let him know how the people of Blythewood feel about Grace Coffee,” Beyer posted along with Mayor J. Michael Ross’ personal cell phone number.

    “My cell phone immediately blew up with calls from angry people,” Ross said. “I was shocked that someone would post my cell on the internet without my permission, and then post that the Town had shut his business down. We didn’t even know he had moved until an electrician came to Town Hall to get a permit to install an electric pole on the Community Center property for Grace Coffee,” Ross said.

    “It is my understanding that Mr. Beyer left his current location in the parking lot of Bits and Pieces Consignment store after he chose not to sign a lease and start paying rent to the new owners,” Ross said. “That’s not the same thing as the Town shutting down his business. The move was between him and the property or store owners. We had nothing to do with it.”

    Beyer posted a video on Saturday backing off his initial post that the Town had shut him down.

    “The Town did not tell us to move off the Main Street property,” Beyer confirmed in the video. He said, however, that his comment about the Town shutting Grace Coffee down, was in reference to the Town not approving a permit for a new power pole at the Community Center property the day after he moved from Bits and Pieces.

    “The other way they shut us down is they are clinging to the ordinance that we are a temporary vendor but they treated us for the last two years as a permanent business that is non-conforming,” Beyer said.

    “Before he moved on Wednesday, Oct. 24, I think it was, we explained to him that if he moved, he would no longer be protected by the grandfather clause that Grace Coffee had enjoyed for the last two years,” Town Administrator Brian Cook told The Voice.

    “It’s as simple as that,” Ross said. “He is welcome to set up in town just like the peanut man and all the other vendors, but he will now have to move every night and live by the same rules the other temporary vendors live by,” Ross said. “Those vendors can’t have permanent gas, water and electrical hookups.”

    In an interview on Tuesday, Oct. 30, Beyer told the Voice that the Town has never told him that he was grandfathered in on that property and that he would no longer be grandfathered in if he moved. He said the town hall has never provided him documentation with that information.

    According to Kristen Benini, the current owner of Bits and Pieces Consignment, Beyer operated in the store’s parking lot rent free for the last two years, with free storage and utilities, paying electricity only when it spiked, and then only for the spike.

    “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for him to pay rent and utilities like every other business in town,” Benini said.

    “I wish Matt all the luck in the world, but I wish he had thought of the consequences of his actions before he pulled his coffee wagon off the lot where he was protected by a grandfather clause,” Ross said. “He has turned himself into a temporary vendor that has to operate under the regular vendor rules.”

    “We did not want to move,” Beyer posted on Facebook, “but there are new owners of Bits and Pieces Consignment, and they are not allowing us to be there anymore.”

    In an interview with The Voice, Beyer said Annette Wilson, the new owner, did push him off the property.

    Beyer said he received a rental agreement from the new owners Tuesday, Oct. 16.

    “But before I even got a chance to talk to them, Friday morning I got a text saying they wanted to retract it, that they didn’t want us there, so we needed to be out by Oct. 31,” Beyer said.

    Emails and texts obtained by The Voice from Wilson appear to contradict those claims.

    Wilson, who took ownership of Bits and Pieces on Nov. 1, said she met with the owners, renters and Beyer in late July to discuss the transition of ownership and that Beyer was told by the property owner at that time that he would be expected to begin paying rent under the new ownership.

    “Mr. Beyer and I discussed the contract for several weeks in phone conversations before we drew it up,” Wilson said. “I scheduled a meeting with Mr. Beyer on Oct. 4 to go over the rental agreement, but he cancelled the day before, saying he was too busy to meet.”

    After that, from Oct. 7 until Oct. 16, both parties say they exchanged emails and talked on the phone about the contract.

    “On Oct. 17, I emailed the contract to Mr. Beyer. He texted me that he received it and he asked me to remove the landscape clause. I told him I would. I then texted all involved (property owners, current renters and Beyer) to schedule a time for us all to meet and to finalize my lease agreement with Mr. Beyer,” Wilson said.

    “The earliest I can meet is Friday,” Beyer emailed back. “I will know my schedule better after tomorrow (Thursday). I will be back in touch.”

    “But we never heard anything else from him,” Wilson said.  “By Friday, when we hadn’t heard from him, and it was the second meeting he had missed to discuss or sign the lease agreement, I had to assume that he was not that interested. After all our communications, I felt he just kept putting us off. It was getting close to Nov. 1, and I didn’t have a signed agreement. So I emailed him what I thought was apparent, that this was not a good fit for either of us and I withdrew the lease,” Wilson said.

    “After our initial meeting in late July, I never was able to meet with him again,” Wilson said. “We never said to him that we did not want him there. We tried. We changed the lease to his specifications, everything. He could have stayed there. All he had to do was sign the lease. Even without signing it, he could have stayed until Oct. 31.”

    Beyer pulled up stakes on Wednesday, Oct. 24 according to Benini. He got permission from Larry Sharpe to set up on the Community Center, which Sharpe owns, that same day. But because his grandfathered status did not extend to that property, Beyer could not obtain a permit for an electrical pole because he was, at that point, a temporary vendor and no longer grandfathered as a permanent structure.

    On Wednesday, Oct. 31, Sharpe told The Voice that Beyer had informed him that he (Beyer) would be moving the coffee trailer that day.

    Beyer told The Voice on Oct. 30 that he did not know where he would set up next.

    “I’m not going to debate the town government, but I am going to allow the community to speak up and if they want us, the government has an opportunity to step in and ask, ‘How can we make this happen?’” Beyer said.

    History of Grandfathering

    When Grace Coffee rolled into town in December 2016, it was considered a mobile vendor. Beyer initially removed the trailer every night as he had agreed to do when he was allowed to set up shop. But as the business became successful, Beyer refused to remove the trailer at night.

    Next, Beyer wanted a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) which is only given to brick and mortar buildings.

    The Board of Architectural Review (BAR) met on April 17, 2017 to consider Grace Coffee’s request for a COA for its location in the parking lot of 208 Main Street.

    Under what one board member described to The Voice as ‘pressure’ from Town Hall, the BAR reluctantly granted Grace Coffee a temporary COA for a period of one year. According to the Town’s former administrator, Gary Parker, the Town had no ordinance in place to address the vending stand, but the Town’s Planning Consultant (at that time) Michael Criss, who, during government meetings championed street vendors, interpreted it to be a structure.

    The temporary COA was intended to allow the Town time to review and create regulations to address vending stands.

    On April 24, an ordinance that superseded the temporary COA issued by the BAR a week earlier, made Grace Coffee a non-conforming use, Town Administrator Brian Cook wrote in a memo to the BAR. This also gave Grace Coffee the same zoning protections of brick and mortar buildings, something none of the other vendors enjoyed. But the non-conforming status was only applicable at the 208 Main Street address.

    “I really have a struggle with the fairness of this,” Jim McLean, Co-Chair of the BAR said at the time.  “Are the brick & mortar stores being undercut?  They have made a hard investment in the town and are abiding by the regulations and restrictions.  The caveat of unfair competition needs to be addressed.”

  • Commision endorses vendor ordinance

    BLYTHEWOOD – After more than a year of handwringing over whether to allow temporary vendors in the Town Center District, the Planning Commissioners voted Monday night to recommend that Council adopt the City of Columbia’s vending ordinance, presented by Town Administrator Brian Cook, with a few tweaks. That modified ordinance, basically, allows temporary vendors and food trucks the same rights and privileges as brick and mortar buildings, but with almost none of the costly architectural or other restrictions imposed on brick and mortar buildings.

    That modified vendor ordinance would allow vendors to sell merchandise, goods, services, or forms of amusement from a temporary structure, such as a tent, awning, canopy, umbrella, stand, booth, cart, trailer, from a vehicle, or from his person. A temporary vendor does not include a person who conducts the majority of his business from within a permanent and enclosed building located upon the same lot.

    Unlike brick and mortar buildings, vendors would not be required to provide handicap restrooms or any restrooms at all.

    While the Commissioners initially worried that aesthetics of temporary vendor’s vehicles, tents, trailers, etc, could become a problem, they concluded that aesthetics for vendors would be too difficult to regulate by ordinance and moved on. Brick and mortar buildings in the Town Center District are required to adhere to certain types, quality and colors of building materials, architectural styles, signage, lighting and landscaping. There are no such restrictions on vendor vehicles, tents, trailers, etc.

    Cook said he presented the same modified ordinance to the Board of Architectural Review two weeks ago and they expressed concern regarding the fairness issue when it came to food trucks locating within 100 feet of a brick and mortar food establishment.  The Commissioners responded by requiring a distance of 250 feet between vendors and certain businesses.

    Commission member Rich McKenrick suggested that multiple temporary vendors might want to set up on a single property.  Cook indicated that the ordinance itself did not prohibit that but that other restrictions regarding number of parking places, safety regarding ingress and egress would apply.  The modified ordinance also restricts vendors from operating within 400 feet of residences.

    After flirting with a few concerns, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to adopt the modified City of Columbus ordinance with the following tweaks:

    Allow the Town Administrator to have sole authority to give written permission for a temporary vendor to operate in the Town Center District,

    Increase the distance between a vendor and the front door of a lawfully established restaurant from 100 feet to 250 feet, and

    Limit occupancy of a vendor to no more than 10 hours a day (24 hours). At all other times the vendors must vacate the parcel they occupy.

    It was confirmed by the Planning Commission Chairman, Donald Brock, that the modified ordinance would not affect Grace Coffee. After Grace Coffee refused to continue moving its trailer off the parcel every night as it had initially agreed to do, Cook interpreted the Town’s zoning laws to confirm that Grace Coffee is now a business in good standing, compliant with the Town’s necessary zoning approvals.

    Town Council will vote on the Commission’s recommendation on the vendor ordinance at its next regular meeting on June 25.

  • Surprise! Grace Coffee complies with zoning

    BLYTHEWOOD – While it may come as a surprise to the owners of brick and mortar commercial buildings in downtown Blythewood, Grace Coffee, a small turquoise and white mobile home housed on a parking lot in downtown Blythewood, is now a business in good standing and is in compliance with the necessary zoning approvals from the Town of Blythewood, according to an interpretation of the Town’s Zoning Administrator Brian Cook.

    How that came about is confusing to many and being questioned by some who run businesses out of brick and mortar buildings and have spent years adhering to the Town’s zoning and architectural review standards or face stiff daily fines.

    But Grace Coffee is apparently not required to meet the Town’s standards for materials, landscape, paint color, sign and other things, yet is not fined for not doing so.

    As the Town’s Planning Consultant Michael Criss, explained to the BAR Board Monday evening, Grace Coffee’s owner was initially removing the trailer every night as it had agreed to do when it was allowed to set up shop. But as the business became successful, the owner, Matt Beyer, balked at removing the trailer at night, Criss said.

    Next, Grace Coffee wanted a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA).

    The BAR met on April 17, 2017 to consider Grace Coffee’s request for a COA for its location in the parking lot of 208 Main Street.

    Under what one board member described to The Voice as ‘pressure’ from Town Hall, the BAR reluctantly granted Grace Coffee a temporary COA for a period of one year. According to the Town’s former administrator, Gary Parker, the Town had no ordinance in place to address the vending stand, but Criss interpreted it to be a structure.

    The temporary COA was supposed to allow the Town time to review and create regulations to address vending stands.

    Adding another layer of confusion, Council was then presented Ordinance 2017.002 for consideration. The passage of that ordinance on April 24, superseded the temporary COA issued by the BAR a week earlier, and made Grace Coffee a non-conforming use, Cook wrote in a memo to the BAR. This also gave Grace Coffee the same zoning protections of other brick and mortar buildings. However there was no announcement at the time to that effect and former Councilman Tom Utroska, who voted for the ordinance, told The Voice that he had not been aware that, when passed, the ordinance would supersede the temporary COA.

    Section 155.276 of the ordinance offers definitions of itinerant merchants and vending stands. Item B of the ordinance says that vending stands are to be removed daily and cannot be stored on property within the TC District – but that does not apply to Grace Coffee. Item C addresses nonconforming uses.

    “Any vending stand in lawful operation upon the date of first reading of this section may continue to operate without regard to the daily removal requirement…” That, according to Town Hall, is Grace Coffee. It can now operate as a nonconforming vending stand in the Town Center District, according to the interpretation of the Town’s zoning administrator. And while Grace Coffee’s one-year COA has expired, the issue is moot if, indeed, Ordinance 2017.002 superseded it.

    Cook drafted a version of the City of Columbia’s Temporary Vending Ordinance that has the Blythewood Chamber’s backing and presented it to the BAR Monday night for information. It will next go to the Planning Commission’s June 4 meeting for a vote.

    Jim McLean, Co-Chair of the Board of Architectural Review, expressed his concern that the proposed ordinance will allow a temporary food truck vendor the potential to set up 365 days a year in Blythewood.  As long as they meet the zoning district requirement, locate at least 100 feet from the door of a lawfully established eating place, maintain within the food truck proof of written permission from the private property owner, receives annually a zoning permit to operate a food truck, move the food truck off the property each evening and operates for no more than 10 consecutive hours within a calendar day, does not operate between 9 pm and 9 am and the parcel on which the vendor operates is more than 400 feet from a parcel zoned residential., they would be eligible.

    “I really have a struggle with the fairness of this,” McLean said.  “Are the brick and mortar stores being undercut?  They have made a hard investment in the town and are abiding by the regulations and restrictions.  The caveat of unfair competition needs to be addressed.”

    There was general consensus that food trucks and temporary vendors associated with events would continue to be acceptable.  And there appears to be no problem with concessionaires and persons selling only seasonal merchandise, such as fireworks, pumpkin stands and Christmas trees are also permitted under the ordinance.

    BAR member Alan George brought a “what if” to the discussion regarding the possibility of a tattoo truck setting up shop.  Cook said that if the vendor met all other criteria he would be eligible.  The question was raised regarding sexually oriented businesses (SOBs) being eligible under this ordinance.  Criss confirmed that the TC (Town Center) zoning would not have to accommodate the SOB use.

    The BAR committee asked that there be some criteria addressed for mobile vending and standards dealing with the appropriateness of the vendors.

    Criss said there are several options including adopting an ordinance to accommodate vendors, go back to only allowing them for special events or seasonal sales or something in between.