Rising country music star Alexandra Kay, who got her big break singing covers while making coffee in her kitchen, plans to open The Coffee Girl (219 S Main St) on Thursday, June 19, in her hometown of Waterloo, Illinois.
The Coffee Girl will open in the downtown Waterloo space that previously housed Bean Tree Café, Kay’s go-to coffee shop for more than 17 years. Kay purchased the building from the owners when they retired, keeping much of the menu but updating the décor and the exterior to her trademark pink. Her father, Steven Krekorian, will serve as the coffee shop’s general manager, roasting the beans in house and overseeing the food and beverage menus. Here’s what to know before you go.
The Menu
Headlining the coffee selections is “AK’s Favorite,” the drink that Kay brewed each day in the viral social media series that brought her to the attention of country music icons such as Randy Travis and Tim McGraw.
AK’s Favorite is an iced vanilla latte with sugar-free vanilla syrup and almond milk. “That is what I’ve always ordered, and that is the exact coffee I was making in every single video,” she says. “I was always making the same one because I’m such a creature of habit!”
Kay promises local residents that AK’s Favorite and other drinks will taste just like they remember from the previous owners, Lisa and Jay Jones, because they generously walked Krekorian through every step of roasting the beans and brewing the drinks. The Coffee Girl will continue to source its Guatemalan, Brazilian, and Colombian beans from the same suppliers.
“Everyone in Waterloo can rest assured that the quality is not going to change,” Kay says. That’s true of the full line of coffee drinks, the seasonal and monthly specials, and the food menu.
“With the Bean Tree being such a staple of our community for so long, I didn’t want to take that away, so we kept a lot of the menu items the same,” she adds. “We elevated a couple of items and added our own twist, like a gluten-free option for buns and pancakes.” New dishes include breakfast classics, such as avocado toast and eggs Benedict.
The Atmosphere
One change that locals will undoubtedly notice is the color scheme, starting with a large floral mural across the entire building. “As soon as you turn the corner coming into downtown, you can’t miss it,” Kay says with a laugh. “Things will be a little more pink—and the coffee will have a dusted bow on top—but they’re really going to enjoy it.”
If “Cupid’s a Cowgirl,” as one of Kay’s newly released singles suggests, she will feel right at home in the setting, with everything from the walls to the furniture to the flower vases in various hues of pink.
More than 1,700 fans have already indicated via the Facebook event that they’re interested in joining Kay for the grand opening on June 19. Some have commented that they’ll be driving in from several hours away for the 10 a.m. ribbon cutting and an opportunity to meet the country singer until 2 p.m. (Regular hours are 6:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. daily.)
Some of her fans have also commented that they’ll be stopping by the shop the following day, June 20, when she performs at Saint Louis Music Park. “Alexandra Kay fans are a different kind of dedicated, and we love them so much for that,” Kay says.
She’ll spend much of this summer opening for Brad Paisley at cities across the eastern U.S.—but she promises to stop by her café as often as she’s able.
The Coffee Girl will have a solidly country playlist on its newly installed sound system, with plenty of Kay’s own songs mixed in. Longtime fans will be listening for “All I’ve Ever Known,” the title track from her 2023 debut country album. It contains the biggest lyric in her entire set: “Sometimes I miss that yellow kitchen.” It’s a nod to the color of the walls in her viral videos, and “people scream it at the top of their lungs,” says Kay, clearly touched by their devotion.
She’s also grateful to residents of Waterloo and the greater St. Louis metro area for their help transitioning the space from Bean Tree Café to The Coffee Girl in a single month. In particular, she says, Middendorf and Reuss Construction worked nonstop to get the project completed on time.
“All you want as someone in a small town is to be embraced by the community,” she says.
The Backstory
Kay got her start on the St. Louis music scene as a teenager, signing her first record deal in 2013. She made connections in everything from rap to pop, but she eventually returned to her roots in country music via covers of artists such as Dolly Parton. An appearance on the 2018 Netflix reality series Westside, about nine musicians in Los Angeles, helped grow her fan base.
Kay has more than 8.6 million social media followers, including 4.3 million on TikTok, where she is one of the top-selling artists on the TikTok shop for music. She opened for Jelly Roll’s 2024 Beautifully Broken tour, played Morgan Wallen’s sold-out show in London, and has collaborated with a who’s who of music stars.
She just completed two back-to-back headlining tours that sold more than 80,000 tickets, and she’s currently releasing songs ahead of her sophomore album, coming out later this year. The newest single is “Feminine Energy,” to be released on June 20.
Kay lives in Nashville—where, for the record, her kitchen is blue—and plans to open a second location of The Coffee Girl there, in keeping with the culture and history of country music artists with bars and restaurants on Broadway. She intends to eventually franchise The Coffee Girl concept.
“I have a lot of young fans, and it makes me feel good that their parents can bring them in,” she says of her decision to open a café rather than an establishment centered on alcohol. And, she adds, it makes sense to continue the theme that served her so well during the pandemic. “I pay homage to those days because they changed my life.”
📍219 S. Main, Waterloo
📞 618-939-5330
⏰6:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m., daily
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