At this coffeehouse in Columbia County, the menu creates a catalyst to 'cultivate community'

At Rooted Coffeehouse in Evans, coffee and food come second. Its owners wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We really mean it when we say, 'Coffee cultivating community,'” Ali Kocher said. “That’s been our catchphrase since the beginning and that’s been the heart behind it.”

Kocher is a married mother and a neonatal intensive care nurse. Her mother, Heather Needles, has been a stay-at-home mother to six children. After Needles’ husband’s job took the entire family to Georgia in 2016, both women decided to create for themselves, and for eager customers, a coffee-flavored taste of home from their native rural Illinois.

“Coming from a really small town, Iife was really kind of quaint back home, so we were looking for something to do with ourselves,” Needles said.

“One thing we did notice is that coffeehouses were a little bit lacking in this space, where back home we did a lot of life in coffeehouses,” Kocher said.

That was about seven years ago. The “space” is the sprawling Riverwood Plantation residential development, when the Publix-anchored Riverwood Town Center nearby was still attracting its earliest tenants. Rooted stayed at Riverwood, 3116 William Few Pkwy., ever since. A second location recently opened at Evans Towne Center, sharing retail space with dessert stop Alumni Cookie Dough.

A few years after Rooted opened at Riverwood, a certain well-known Seattle-based coffeeshop with more than 16,000 locations worldwide moved a couple of doors down.

“No matter how many coffeeshops pop up, and whatever catchphrases they use, it’s never going to change what we’re about and what we started,” Kocher said. “We haven’t changed.”

“I also think you’ve got Starbucks customers and you’ve got local coffeehouse customers,” Needles said. “The customer base is different. We have incredibly loyal customers here every day."

“And we really believe that competition does make you better,” Kocher added. “It really encourages you to be creative and not stay stagnant.”

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Rooted customers who come for the coffee often stay for the hot sandwiches, smoothie bowls and gourmet toast. Needles and Kocher stick to the philosophy that foods they wouldn’t eat or serve to their children don’t go on the menu.

One of the most popular menu items is Rooted’s acai bowl. Pureed acai palm fruit is topped with sliced banana, blueberries, strawberries and granola. It’s so popular that “we can’t ever get rid of it,” Kocher said.

Visiting Rooted for the first time recently, Medical College of Georgia student Abbie Hotchkiss had heard about the business “a lot,” and wasn’t disappointed with the sweet ham sandwich she ordered.

“Their sandwich was really good,” she said. “I think it was the best sandwich I ever had.”

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, at least a half-dozen people occupied tables that in many other eateries would be empty at that time of day. Rooted strives to create a welcoming, inspirational environment for customers.

“That’s how we teach our employees,” Kocher said. “When somebody walks into your coffeeshop, you don’t know what they’re going through, so we leave people better than we found them. We don’t just want to do that in life. We want our shop to do that. Really, it’s the heart of Rooted.”

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Rooted coffeehouse serves up a calming sense of community