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For Your Convenience:Rocheport General Store stocks provisions, creates gathering spot

For Your Convenience:Rocheport General Store stocks provisions, creates gathering spot

Although charming in many ways, the small community of Rocheport has lacked a place where residents and visitors could gather for coffee or beer or even stop to pick up a quart of milk. All that changed Aug. 5, when the Rocheport General Store officially opened for business.Owned and operated by sisters Kim Phillips and Stacey Karabegovic, the Rocheport General Store offers a variety of products and services and continues to define itself as the clientele and community dictate. For townsfolk, the extended business hours and varied menu are a real boost for the town.

“We’re a very social group here in Rocheport,” Phillips said. In fact, it was the lack of a centralized gathering place that spawned the idea of the General Store. Karabegovic had lived in Rocheport for more than a year and recognized the need for a store that stocked sundry items for residents and visitors, as well as offering good food, assorted beverages and a limited supply of merchandise and groceries.

Phillips and Karabegovic originally approached other business owners and even the Rocheport mayor about opening a general store in one of the abandoned buildings downtown. With the blessings of fellow business owners and residents, the pair forged ahead, spending several months acquiring leasing rights to the building and then cleaning and restoring it.

Townspeople even helped during the clean-up process. “We had professionals sweeping the floors and artists re-arranging merchandise,” Phillips said of their pre-opening group effort. Original shelving and woodwork remain from when the vintage building was a pharmacy and apothecary. The store features a soda fountain, sells an array of locally grown products, and even serves fresh baked goods, homemade specialty soups, salads, sandwiches and entrée specials.

“We use whatever fresh ingredients we have stocked on the shelves to determine our menu,” Phillips said.

The main chef, Gregory Kirchhofer, who also manages the Katy Trail Bed and Bikefest, concurs.

“Central Missouri has such an awesome network of local farmers with superior products,” he said. “We use the ingredients that we sell. It’s all fresh, all really good.”

In addition to the success of menu items, Phillips has been amazed by the demand for milk and frozen pizza. The General Store stocks Heartland Dairy products in reusable glass containers. “I sell out of milk, and I’m getting it twice a week,” she said. As for the frozen Shakespeare’s pizzas, Phillips said, “I sold 90 pizzas in two weeks.” This, in a town with a population of only 208 residents.

Although the store already is open extended hours—until 10 p.m. weekdays, until midnight Fridays and Saturdays and from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays—customers are requesting more. Currently Phillips’s husband, an internist at the Veteran’s Hospital, relieves her in the evening hours, while Karabegovic, a teacher in Columbia, helps out mainly on weekends.

“We already offer Wi-Fi,” Phillips said. “We plan to add international home cooking and maybe add a Sunday brunch.”

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