MONROE — The new craft beverages and art lounge called “Beyond Crafty” is set to open on Nov. 1 in the old Ruf’s Confectionery and Rainbow Confectionery building on the square. The business will be run by Natalie and Sean Siebert and will have drinks, some food, and crafts.
Main Street Monroe is excited for the new business to open downtown and what it will offer the community.
“We are delighted that such an iconic retail space is going to be open again and soon,” stated Jordan Nordby of Main Street Monroe. “There is also something so exciting about a new business that is filling a gap that will also complement what we already have downtown. Sean and Natalie are doing that. They have so much enthusiasm. It’s been really fun seeing the behind-the-scenes work and to think about what is coming.”
Natalie and Sean decided to open their business in hopes of helping others and offering a place for people to relax and be creative.
“This is something I’ve been tossing around in my mind for the last couple of years. During COVID, my reset and de-stressor was crafting and I really enjoyed it, and I kind of wanted to be able to offer that to other people. So I eventually did some classes at a different coffee shop and just wanted my own space to be able to offer a place for people to come and be creative and just really escape the regular life for an hour or two and decompress,” Natalie explained. “It helped me, mental health wise, to have something like that, so I just wanted to give that to the community because it is important to have something to reset yourself.”
They chose to do this here in Monroe because, since they’ve moved here, they truly love the community and the town itself.
“We moved from Oklahoma to here in 2017, and we’ve come to love this little town, and we want to be a part of the community and a fixture of this community. I have a long history of management, and I know the town only has 10,000 people, but Monroe is the center of Green County, and even Lafayette County, so there’s more than 10,000 people. To me, there’s an opportunity in Monroe that hasn’t been tapped. So that’s one of the reasons, and this space, you can’t build this kind of space, so that opportunity, when it came to us, everything was kind of just aligning for us,” Sean said.
The business itself will offer a variety of dirty sodas, coffee, some food, and hopefully milkshakes, along with the crafts you can do on your own, crafting classes, and a relaxing place to just hang out.
“The main thing is going to be the dirty soda. When we found this space, it looked very similar to like an old 1920s pharmacy with a soda bar and big marble counter, so we are having a soda tap system custom-built for us so it’ll look like the soda jerk kind of thing,” Natalie said. “So we’ll have a soda tap system, coffee drinks, some mocktails, and eventually we’ll probably have some shakes, just some basic things. We’re going to do a couple of food items for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a couple of appetizers, and then just different craft classes. So sip and paints, but like sip and craft.”
They also want to clarify the meaning behind what a “dirty soda” is as not to cause any confusion.
“A lot of people don’t understand the terminology. They think it has alcohol in it, and that’s what makes it dirty, but that’s not the case. A dirty soda can be anything as simple as a vanilla Coke or vanilla Dr. Pepper, or as complicated as a drink that I like to make, and I call it the Samoa: you take coconut cream, a little bit of vanilla, mix that up, take caramel and drizzle it on the inside of the glass, put ice in it, dump your Dr. Pepper in, a little bit of half and half, and you mix it up and you take a drink and it tastes just like a Samoa Girl Scouts cookie,” Sean explained. “So a dirty soda can be as complicated as that and as simple as one type of syrup or multiple syrups or even mixing two different types of sodas together. It’s taking the regular soda and adding something to it other than ice.”
There will also be smaller crafts you can do by yourself if you don’t want to attend a class.
“There will be simple crafting you can do just on your own, like a jewel painting. So if you just wanted to unwind and jewel-paint something small, you’ll have that opportunity along with having sodas and things like that,” Sean stated.
“We’re going to have little crafts you can do, like make your own pens so I’ve made pen packs and bead packs and so you can pick out whatever pack of pens you like and whatever pack of beads you like and have a drink and sit and just play around with something little so you’re being creative but it’s not like you have to get out a bunch of paint and do all this cleaning, but something to just kind of pass the time and be a little fun and just distract yourself from reality for a bit,” Natalie added.
The two are very excited to finally be so close to having their business up and running and being able to share it with the community while also offering something new that it doesn’t really have.
“You know, there’s plenty of coffee shops, but we’re offering the dirty soda and keeping to the heritage of this building and this town, while also offering a place for families or teenagers to come and hang out, or just someone that just wants to get away, zone out, cause we’ll offer free internet, we’ll have a little lounge area so somewhere people can just come and relax,” Sean stated.
“When I initially was mulling this all over in my head, you know, sometimes you get off of work and you wanna meet somebody and catch up and you wanna go some place for a cup of coffee, well there’s no place in Monroe really that’s open after five for coffee,” Natalie added. “So I wanted to have a place for people to come and meet up with somebody that’s not a bar that you could still just kind of get a cup of coffee in the evening if you’d like, just a different type of space, different than everything else that’s open later hours so people can meet somebody here to catch up and not feel like they have to go sit in a busy, loud bar or restaurant.”
Sean and Natalie also want to engage with the community through their shop, making everyone feel welcome and even invested in the business in a way.
“I feel like some places are in the community, but they’re not for everybody in the community, like a bar, and we want a space where anybody can feel welcome and come in and be as creative as they want to be with trying to figure out a soda,” Natalie stated. “I even want to have different ways to engage the community, like putting your suggestion for a drink together, and then we’ll pick one and that will be featured on the menu for a month and be named after you. We just want to have the community come in and partake in the business almost, besides just being customers.”
In terms of a target audience, they don’t have one in mind and welcome anyone and everyone who wants to come. They are trying to appeal to the community as a whole, so there isn’t an age range they’re particularly catering to, although some age groups may frequent more than others.
“Because soda and coffee have such a broad range, we don’t have a specific target audience, but if we were to narrow it down, it would probably be middle school all the way to young professionals, since they would be the ones more inclined to come here on a regular basis, especially someone that wants like a dirty soda and that’s something they’ve maybe seen on tv but really haven’t seen much in this state. So just having those opportunities might make it more geared toward someone that is younger,” Sean explained.
It took them a while before they were able to start working towards opening the business, and the process takes a lot of hard work and time. This is some advice they’d give to an aspiring business owner.
“Have patience and get as much input and help that you can,” Natalie said. “If you have a passion for something or you have a dream, pursue it. My thing was like I’d rather do it and fail than to not try and regret it, going through life being like “oh I wish I would’ve tried that. I really wanted to do it but I was too scared to try because I didn’t want to fail.” At least if it fails, I can still say at least I was brave enough to try.”
“Don’t give up. A lot of people will tell you that you’re — not wrong — they’re looking out for you, but they’re also going to push you away from it because people don’t want to see you fail because it’s scary. We don’t know the future, but we’re confident in ourselves and we always have been. The biggest thing is don’t give up,” Sean added.
The two can’t wait to open up the shop and have people in the community enjoy what they’ve created.
“We’re excited for the community because we really love this town, and we want to bring something fun that’s for everybody in the community, and we want this to be somewhere that people feel safe,” Sean stated. “We’re from the southern part of the country, so one thing we want to bring is that southern hospitality to people. I want you to feel as if you’re walking in here and you’re walking into my home, and I want to greet you and make you feel like a guest.”
