“We’re operating our current business in there while still keeping the coffee aspect of Crooked Tree, which we love,” says Fount Board and Table owner Olivia Genthe. “It will kind of feel a little bit more like a euro cafe, a third place: People have home and work. I feel like Uptown has such room to grow in that area.”
Genthe was a long-time patron of Crooked Tree, too.
“I loved it. It was so vibrant. I wrote my first business plan from Crooked Tree,” she says. “I’m so excited to be in there. That community, it’s communal and wholeness-minded, we’re excited to fill a niche for a community space in that coffeehouse-type of vibe there. Crooked Tree did such a good job of that. We’re excited to keep that.”
Their specialty is boards, focusing heavily on meats and cheeses, of course, but Genthe says they aim to be a "curator of goods," bringing the best breads, for example, while featuring other foods such as caviar or oysters.
While it sounds like a nice thing coming to this historic corner of Uptown, some of us are still bummed Crooked Tree has gone.
For those of us who lived in State Thomas before 2010, Crooked Tree was a frequent destination. A party celebrating it before it closed had people who flew in from out of town, an example of how loved the business in this little house was.
Crooked Tree Coffeehouse
“Sarah [Momary] and I have been the owners. ... We kind of hedged our bets with the business, and it’s always worked out really well, we’ve always made ends meet,” she says. “But I was single at the time, and she was newly married, no kids. Since then, she’s had four kids and I’ve had three kids so kind of the last, probably, five years, we said if it can make ends meet without us having to be there all the time, then it’s worth it.”
They had purchased the house when they opened in 2008. In May, time came that the value of the house was worth more than scraping by in business.
“We were starting to have to put our money into it to keep the doors open, and it was just less foot traffic, less people coming in, I think it had to do with more shops opening.”
Shops in the area, sure, but also local coffee shops. We’re talking 11 years ago: We didn’t have the options of local coffee shops. And with Crooked Tree and the recent closure of Mudsmith, one can wonder if the newer ones might be winning out for now.
Fount Board and Table is expected to open near the end of the year with daily operating hours of 6 a.m. to midnight.
