After 21 years, ‘COVID fatigue’ contributes to end of popular Edwardsville coffee shop
Sacred Grounds Cafe brought together lawyers and artists, businessmen and cyclists, musicians and professors, farmers and bartenders.
At least it did before the COVID-19 pandemic led to bans on indoor dining and other restrictions.
Owner Jenn Courtney had a knack for making everyone feel welcome, according to customers of the coffee shop and restaurant that has been a staple in downtown Edwardsville for more than two decades. Some pushed together tables for group discussions. Others strummed guitar or played board games.
“It’s eclectic,” said Beth White, 42, a speech language pathologist who worked at Sacred Grounds while attending Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in the early 2000s.
“It seems to ebb and flow, depending on the customers and the artwork and the music choices of who’s working there. It’s not like a cookie-cutter place where you always know what you’re going to get. You do with the food, but not with the ambiance or the decor.”
White spoke with a bit of sadness in her voice. She recently learned that Sacred Grounds will close on Dec. 31. No more lavender lattes, fresh-baked brownies or veggie quiches.
“I just wonder if (the loss) will continue with other small businesses,” she said.
But Courtney, 51, is trying to stay positive. She has decided to retire, take care of the many animals on her rural Edwardsville property and learn how to make pottery.
Courtney hasn’t publicly announced the restaurant’s closing, but rumors began to spread after she posted a Facebook message on Dec. 7, asking people to “please, please, please” use their gift certificates by the end of the month.
“I’m not being forced to quit,” Courtney said Sunday. “It’s been 21 years, and I’m tired. Then with COVID fatigue on top of it, that just made the decision easier for me.”
Instrumental in downtown revival
Courtney leased the historic storefront at 233 N. Main St. for the city’s first coffee-house-style restaurant in 1999. She spent months renovating the space, exposing its brick walls, tall ceiling and hardwood floors.
The 30-year-old entrepreneur wasn’t discouraged when the late Mayor Gary Niebur gently warned her that other businesses had failed to survive in the somewhat blighted section of downtown Edwardsville. The city had just bought the vacant Wildey Theatre with plans to renovate and open it as a community center to help with renewal.
Longtime customer Jeffrey Skoblow remembers how Sacred Grounds immediately increased foot traffic and created something of a buzz.
“I really think of that place as kind of a beachhead for the revival of Main Street,” he said.
Skoblow, a retired SIUE English professor, and his wife, Mary Grose, a nurse, became regulars. Before the pandemic hit in mid-March, they stopped by almost every morning for breakfast.
“It was a welcoming place,” said Skoblow, 65. “It had an open feeling to it, warm and not fussy. I liked the coffee. I liked the pastries. I liked the veggie panini sandwiches. I liked Jenn, and I liked all the adorable young people that she hired to work there over the years.”
The staff made muffins, scones and other baked goods from scratch each morning and served vegetarian lunches with a focus on natural and organic ingredients. They wrote menu items, which changed daily, on a chalkboard.
An opening to the kitchen allowed customers to shout greetings to Courtney, who was usually wrapped in an apron, on their way to the bathroom or a wooden cupboard, where they could pick up bags of Mississippi Mud coffee, roasted by a small St. Louis company. Some brought in fresh flowers for the counter.
Sacred Grounds also doubled as an art gallery. Local artists covered an entire wall with paintings and other work as part of a rotating exhibit called “The Gogh-Getters.”
“People didn’t just go there to get their coffee or lunch,” Skoblow said. “They went there to share the space.”
COVID-19 hit with a vengeance
Illinois restaurants and bars have been on a roller-coaster ride since March 17, when Gov. J.B. Pritzker limited them to carryout and drive-thru service as part of a state shutdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Many reopened for outdoor dining on May 29 and indoor dining on June 26 under the Restore Illinois plan to restart the economy. But the governor banned indoor dining again on Sept. 2 in the metro-east region due to rising positivity rates on COVID-19 tests. He lifted the ban on Oct. 9 and reimposed it on Oct. 28.
“We were only doing $100 in sales on some days (in the spring at Sacred Grounds),” Courtney said.
A Paycheck Protection Program loan from the federal government helped, but the staff eventually went from 15 people to four. Courtney dramatically reduced hours and began working overtime to take up the slack.
The situation became even more complicated this fall, when COVID-19 rates surged in Madison County, requiring at least one employee to quarantine due to exposure.
“A lot of my expenses have been going up, and I’m looking at January and February to be awful months, depending on the weather, how much snow and ice we get,” Courtney said, noting that would keep customers from sitting at tables on the sidewalk. “It just seemed like the right time (to go in a new direction).”
Courtney emphasizes that many people have shown their support in recent months by ordering carryouts, buying gift certificates and even sending checks in the mail.
That tells her that she accomplished her original goal, creating the framework for a business but allowing customers to take it the rest of the way and develop their own energy and sense of ownership.
One of Courtney’s proudest moments was when a man told her that walking into Sacred Grounds Cafe just made him feel good, like coming home.
“She kept prices low,” Skoblow said. “We kept telling her she should double the price of everything because we wanted her to stay afloat. But that’s not what it was about for her. It was a community place, and I think she really cherished that aspect of it, that people saw it not just as a business, but as a kind of sacred ground, a place that held the community together.”
This story was originally published December 21, 2020 at 9:45 AM.
