Thursday, February 22, 2024
A Massachusetts-based coffee shop will soon be opening its second location in Fox Point — and GoLocal spoke with owner Jess Sabine about what lured her over state lines and into Providence.
The Rose Room, which currently operates in Webster, Massachusetts, is now coming to Wickenden Street.
“My husband and I were working in Nantucket, and then Portland, Maine,” said Sabine, who noted her husband’s background is in fine dining — but hers has always been in coffee.
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“I always had a dream of having my own place,” said Sabine.
That was the first Rose Room in Webster — close by to Sabine’s roots in Dudley, Massachusetts — which opened in 2018.
It was a chance trip to Providence and meeting people in Fox Point, however, that planted the seed for a second Rose Room location.
“I didn’t know I wanted to expand,” laughed Sabine. “The universe decided it for me.”
Lured in by Fox Point’s Small Business Community
Sabine said she had taken a train into Providence following a trip to New York City last spring, and caught up with her brother — over a meal at Pizza Marvin, her soon-to-be neighbor.
Sabine said she was intrigued about what had been a small coffee shop next door, but that didn’t think much of it, until the next day.
“Jake, the owner of Tallulah’s Tacos, came to the Rose Room in Webster,” said Sabine, of meeting another Fox Point business owner, Jacob Rojas.
“I had asked him what had brought him to Webster, and we got to talking about the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program,” she said, which turns out they both had gone through.
“He understood where my mind was at…and let me know that the coffee shop was for sale,” said Sabine. “It all unfolded beautifully.”
Sabine says that renovations at The Rose Room at 460 Wickenden should be complete by the end of the month and ready to open.
“Our focus is on specialty coffee. We make all our syrups from scratch, and we use Atomic,” said Sbine, of the Massachusetts-based coffee roasters. “We try and keep it seasonal with local farms. We’ll have a light foot menu — bagels, biscuits, overnight oats.”
And for Sabine, she immediately fell in love with Fox Point.
“The neighborhood has reached out and been so supportive,” she said. “I love exploring Wickenden. It’s all small businesses which I love, which is our niche — supporting local, shopping small — local farms, small makers. We want to be that ‘third space’ that coffee shops fill.”
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