A new social hub

Two or three miles from Interstate 70, tucked into the woods, Central Street in Rocheport hasn’t seen a car in 15 minutes. The sound of an engine just doesn’t seem to fit here, a community with small 19th-century buildings that house equally small businesses. They’re the kinds of places where the owners sit behind the counter and appear to be more interested in small talk than salesmanship.

That’s just Rocheport, though. You know someone is an out-of-towner if he doesn’t say hi when you pass on the street. Established in 1825, it’s the kind of place where everyone’s been introduced to each other. But, in this town of 208 people, something has been missing for quite a while.

“This town has been waiting for a social center for years, a place to just sit down and have a cup of coffee,” Mayor Brett Dufur said Wednesday. “The General Store is more than just one more business for this town, and it’s definitely about a lot more than milk and frozen pizzas.”

That’s what Kim Phillips and her sister, Stacey Karabegovic, had in mind last summer, peeking through a hole in the boarded-up windows of the old ceramics shop jammed between the post office and Granny’s Antiques and Gifts. Although Phillips lives in Columbia, her sister is a resident of Rocheport who knew that with all its charm the town lacked a place to get the basic necessities: milk, some coffee in the morning and a snack.

So they made the necessary arrangements and opened the Rocheport General Store on Aug. 5. Originally it was supposed to be a cross between a convenience store and a coffee shop, but in the few months it’s been open, it’s become much more: a community center that fits any number of purposes.

It’s turned into a restaurant, offering a variety of cuisine, such as beef brisket and stuffed bell peppers, soups and salads. It’s been a music venue, even a theater. Phillips says it’ll be a movie house in the not-too-distant future. Never in Rocheport has a structure so small ­­— eight or nine seats at the bar, 10 to 12 tables on the floor — been an arena for so much.

There are a few things the General Store will never be. You can pick up a case of beer, but you can’t get a bottle at the bar. Phillips said she doesn’t want it to turn into a tavern. A massage therapist, Phillips has toyed with the idea of offering massages as well but rejected the idea for basically the same reason she won’t sell alcohol.

“If we served liquor I think we’d be less family-friendly, and I don’t want people in town to get the wrong impression,” Phillips said. “We want to stay within the moral basis of the community.”

The store itself definitely fits. In a community known for its small-town charm, nostalgia is everywhere. It’s the same with Phillips’ shop.

Lining the display shelves is an assortment of products without a familiar label, candies in simple plastic containers, jellies in simple glass jars. Many of the products are made in Missouri, including Shakespeare’s pizza and Les Bourgeois wine.

The shelves themselves look as if they were borrowed from the set of a Depression-era film. The bar looks as if it’s from the same set. Even the layout is one that hasn’t been popular in a while — the main area leading back to a loft that serves as a lounge.

The furniture is simple, dark wooden chairs and two-tone square tables, while the decorations seem pulled from a Norman Rockwell painting. In one storefront window sits a Coca-Cola Santa Claus; in the other, hay bales and pumpkins. Phillips wasn’t shooting for nostalgia with her finished product; she simply didn’t want it to look like everything else.

“We wanted something that would respect the historical nature of the town,” Phillips said. “I wanted it to be classy but simple, nothing flashy. The one thing I didn’t want to be was cookie-cutter, like most of the other coffee shops I’ve been to.”

It helps that the employees are just as willing to start up a conversation as the rest of Rocheport’s inhabitants. And because of that, the General Store has been welcomed with open arms.

“I haven’t heard anything but good things about it,” said Rose Prewitt, who works next door at Granny’s Antiques and Gifts. “I go three times a week. Every day I work, and it suits my taste and other people’s as well.”

Finding residents and visitors in Rocheport who have a bad word to say about the General Store is harder than finding a four-story building. It’s a perfect fit between business and community, Dufur said.

Phillips said that her success is due in part to her location.

“I would flunk in Columbia,” Phillips said. “There’s too much competition, and I think there’d be too much pressure to be perfect.”

In Rocheport she’s filling a need, making it easy to forget about deadlines, sit down, relax, and maybe have a conversation.