At Course Coffee Roasters, at 1218/1220 N. 2nd Street in the historic Frenchtown district of St. Charles, every stage of the coffee experience is shaped by the phrase, “Great coffee is meant to be discovered.”
What started as a small roastery inspired by a mutual passion for coffee, travel, and people has grown into a full-fledged coffee bar, serving one-of-a-kind coffees sourced from around the globe.
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The brand launched in 2017, with co-owners Brandon and Sarah Runk and Andrew Mueller curating custom roasts for local businesses and selling coffee at the St. Charles Farmers’ Market. By January 2020, they opened the brick-and-mortar coffee shop in Frenchtown. They’ve since expanded the location to create a gathering space with an eclectic collection of vintage furniture.
“Our goal was to be a riverside walk-by-the-park-meets-vintage,” says Mueller. “We wanted our coffee bar to be an experience that mimics our love for learning and discovering new things.”
Today, Course supplies a full roster of local businesses with custom roasts tailored to each client. They continue to host seasonal tasting events, educational classes, and daily coffee flights from around the world. They’ve also preserved sourcing relationships with farmers to deliver high-quality coffee from a range of regions.
Coffee and traveling are what originally brought the three co-owners together: Mueller is an award-winning barista, Sarah grew up working in local coffee shops, and Brandon was a hobby roaster who enjoyed coffee and traveling. “We love getting to be part of each other’s course in life through coffee,” says Sarah. “We want to help other people discover all that great coffee has to offer when you let it be itself.”
Tethered by extensive global travel where they found a shared desire to showcase the people that produce the coffee we drink in the United States, they set out to create a roastery that would serve as a bridge. “Coffee is a business, but it’s so much more than that,” says Brandon. “There has to be a level of trust right from the beginning, and we wanted to preserve that throughout the whole process.”
When they found the coffee bar’s location, just slightly off the beaten path in historic St. Charles, they decided to plant roots. “We immediately felt like there was untapped potential,” says Sarah. “We loved the idea of being tucked away, so we could be the kind of place people just discovered.”
