Main Street Arkansas has brewed a new engaging way for tourists and residents alike to explore local Arkansas commercial districts: the Main Street Arkansas Coffee Trail. This new trail showcases over 40 locally owned and operated coffee shops around the state through a series of business owner profiles and a statewide coffee trail map, highlighting location details and links to each coffee shop’s website. The first statewide coffee trail in Arkansas, this new initiative was officially released just in time for National Coffee Day on September 29, 2021.

“Locally owned and operated coffee shops have become a symbol of vitality, culture, and sense of place in American downtown communities,” said Hannah Ratzlaff, Exterior Design Consultant at Main Street Arkansas. “As we visited and served our 40 participating communities through this challenging past year, it was evident that our network has an incredible inventory of unique and resilient coffee shops. Main Street Arkansas is thrilled to showcase a special view of our local programs through this lens.”

Getting Started

Initially brainstormed during a 2021 planning session, the Main Street Arkansas Coffee Trail is the first trail initiative that the Coordinating Program has ever taken on. Main Street Arkansas began this program by defining the scope of their statewide coffee trail initiative, setting three key qualifications for selecting coffee shops to include on the map. The first qualification set was that the business had to be located within a Main Street district. “There are so many beautiful coffee shops outside of our Main Street districts,” Hannah Ratzlaff told us in a recent interview. “But, since its coming from us, we decided to narrow it down to just coffee shops within Main Street district boundaries.”

In addition to this first item, another key qualification was that coffee had to be one of the business’s primary products or crafts—they couldn’t be a breakfast place that happened to also serve coffee. The Coordinating Program relied on their local Main Street directors to make that call, using their on-the-ground expertise to tell the state program which businesses were coffee-forward. Directors also provided guidance on the third qualification: whether a coffee shop was locally owned and/or operated.

From left to right: Something Sweet in Paragould, AR, and Magnolia Coffee House in Prairie Grove, AR. Photos courtesy of Main Street Arkansas

After this initial filtering from their local directors, Hannah and her colleague Susan Shaddox, Interior Design Consultant at Main Street Arkansas, reached out to the qualifying coffee shop owners to schedule a time for them to visit the local business in person. While the responses from small business owners ranged from enthusiasm to a lack of time or interest, the Main Street Arkansas team ended up traveling around the state and profiling over 40 shops through interviews, photos, and videos.

“After a year of not really being able to get into our communities, being able to visit and dive into the life of the business has been great,” said Hannah. “It’s also been great for those businesses to make a connection with us at the state level, which we feel is really important.”

Putting the Pieces Together

Today, these profiles have been knit together and live on Main Street Arkansas’s website as a digital map (still image at left) and on their social media channels as a campaign dedicated to the Coffee Trail.

To really support the promotion and storytelling components of the trail, Main Street Arkansas partnered with Arkansas Tourism and Arkansas State Parks. Amy Green from Arkansas State Parks designed the official Main Street Arkansas Coffee Trail logo. The tourism department connected the Coordinating Program with on-staff travel writers, who provided key support in crafting language for the 43 coffee shop spotlights. In addition to content support, Arkansas Tourism provided pointers on how to promote the trail.

“We’re fortunate to have the connection with the Tourism folks,” said Greg Phillips, Director of Main Street Arkansas, in our interview. “They can really push it out and reach a wider audience than just we can. I’m looking forward to seeing the response to that.”

The Future of the Coffee Trail

While the Main Street Arkansas Coffee Trail currently exists only as a digital resource, the Coordinating Program hopes to continue to build on this program in the years ahead and further link the digital profiles and map with the physical locations and communities. Hannah envisions a branded vinyl decal as one possible addition: business owners could display this decal in their storefront windows, indicating their shop’s pride and designation as a part of the trail. Hannah also sees such a decal including a hashtag and QR code, linking physical passerby’s to the current digital profile of the business and the larger Coffee Trail map.

From left to right: Ouachita Coffee Roasters in Mena, AR; Indigo Blue Coffeehouse in Pine Bluff, AR; and Fort Smith Coffee Company in Fort Smith, AR. Photos courtesy of Main Street Arkansas

The Coordinating Program is also interested in further helping the local coffee shops utilize their inclusion on the trail to their own gain. “We told every single one of the businesses, ‘Any ideas you have, any ways you’d like to be promoted or marketed or shown off, please tell us how,’” said Hannah. Business owners are already responding to their offer: “The QR code idea was actually a suggestion from Marianne Lee, owner of Indigo Blue Coffeehouse in Pine Bluff.”

“We hope that the Main Street Arkansas Coffee Trail is a resource for Arkansans and tourists to have an authentic coffee experience in Arkansas,” Hannah said. “Instead of seeing the Starbucks or McDonalds sign and just going there, I hope they’ll say, ‘Just a little farther, and we can actually experience an Arkansas coffee shop.’”

Thank you to Hannah Ratzlaff and Greg Phillips for chatting with us about the Main Street Arkansas Coffee Trail! Learn more about each coffee shop on Main Street Arkansas’s Facebook page and Instagram channel, or follow #arcoffeetrail.