Our Story Coffee To Close March 28 Due To Sale Of Property
Our Story Coffee House, 454 North Church St., announced on Sunday, March 1, that the business would be closing effective Saturday, March 28, due to the sale of the building an property to another proprietor, who appears to have plans to change to operation.
The Sullivan business, owned by Chris and Crystal Ray completed an expansion of the operation in 2019 due to growth in the business.
On Sunday, the Rays issued a statement which read; “After almost five years, Our Story will be saying farewell. On Saturday, March 28, we will close our doors and hand over the keys to new owners that will start their own adventure. While we had hoped to find someone to take Our Story and keep “as-is”, that just wasn’t in the cards. We will not announce the new owners names just yet so they have a chance to announce it themselves. However, once they do so, well share it on our page so you can show them the amazing support you have shown us over the years.
We would like you to know this was not an easy decision but was in the best interest of our family. As some of you know we have another business and it has been a difficult challenge for us to maintain both. We have no doubt the new owners will love this building and community just was we have, We were very fortunate to have had a lot of customers come through the doors that are now considered as friends and some amazing employees we have come to love as family. We will defiantly miss you all very much!”
The Sullivan Independent News spoke with Crystal “Kline” Ray on Monday morning, March 2, and she expressed her appreciation once again to the community and all of their valued customers through the years and their recent expansion.
Ray still did not want to disclose the new facility owners at this time out of respect for them to announce their purchase but felt that they would be a good fit in the community.
Ray also stated in her news release, “There are also a few gift certificates still out there from around Christmas so be sure to come in and use those. We will try to stay open until the very last day but, as you can imagine, problems may arise with staffing and inventory that may make things difficult to keep that date firm.”
Our Story began as an online shopping boutique created by Crystal Ray in 2014 which was followed up in 2015 when Ray was joined by sister Brittany and were close to purchasing property along I-44 for the business when they found and purchased their current location, a unique house that they purchased and began the operations.