We are often asked what lead us here. You mean trading in life as a stay-at-home-mom to open a coffee shop in a small town amidst a gentrification, 6 months before a global pandemic, with your sibling doesn’t sound like a great idea to everyone?

Call it a quarter life crisis, blame it on new motherhood sleep deprivation or growing up with entrepreneurial parents. I blame Anna’s dreamer spirit and wild optimism and a little bit of my need for creativity that was a slightly too “out of the box” for life in a cubicle.

We both found ourselves walking away from our careers to take on life as stay at home moms. It was never in our plans to have the capacity and freedom to curate a life from our dreams, working together and running a business that allowed us to build our community up while being flexible enough to allow us to play the proper roles in our family life as well. It was like we had found ourselves at a place in life where we had a second chance to decide “what we wanted to be when we grow up” without the constraints we felt when we were 18 and applying to colleges.

We had shared these thoughts with one another while on a walk in 2019, we were heading towards downtown with no destination in mind and hoping to stumble upon a casual spot to escape the heat with our kids. We got downtown and saw a “Going Out of Business” sale sign on a dreamy historic storefront instead. Our wheels began to spin. We hadn’t found the existing coffee shop we were looking for but had we just manifested our own destiny in a single walk? This was just the thing the small town was lacking, a coffee shop downtown. Growing up traveling, coffee shops always seemed to take on the role of a community space, where un-like people tend to find common ground. If we were craving a place like this, surely there other were too.

Though the dream was there, we were not sure we had the grit. We had no business background and the extent of our coffee knowledge at the time was that we knew we needed it to survive! We went home and researched “how to start a business from scratch”, and thus Press & Porter was born.

The basis of our vision was a place suitable for everyone. Children and families, but also business people having meetings or couples wanting a casual first date spot (true story- a couple of regulars that are now married had their first date here!). We wanted to make a space where customers felt like family and where the products were local and the faces were familiar. Just 3 months after that initial spark, with some hard work, lots of caffeine consumed, long days of DIYs and teaching ourselves most of the basics, Press & Porter opened its doors to the community in July of 2019.

Having adapted to survive through a global pandemic and in the midst of our historic town being gentrified we continue to thrive on local support and our small town regulars. We prioritize local partnerships to provide the most authentic “small town” experience. We are huge on customer service and can bet if we know your drink by heart, we will do our best to remember your name too. We love serving the town that we reside in and we love seeing our shop help curate community through coffee!

We can’t wait to meet you!