Craftwork Coffee Co.
Craftwork's original location on Camp Bowie Boulevard
The Craftwork coffee shops along Camp Bowie Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue won't be called "Craftwork" for much longer.
Craftwork Coffee Co. — the Fort Worth-born brand that launched in 2016 and has recently begun shifting its business focus toward the hospitality industry — announced Monday it will sell its Camp Bowie and Magnolia stores to longtime team members, Katherine Morris and Joshua Tyer.
Tyer, the company’s director of coffee and head roaster, and wife Mary Hanna will take over the Camp Bowie location in mid-April. They’re renaming it Fort Worth Coffee Co., with plans to continue roasting for the shop as well as featuring guest roasters.
“We’re opening Fort Worth Coffee Co. because we love people, coffee, and this city," Tyer said in a statement. "The core of our mission is to care for every person that walks through our doors with a great level of intentionality."
Meanwhile, Morris, Craftwork’s director of operations, will take over the Magnolia shop starting in May. Magnolia, too, will operate under a new name — Cherry Coffee — and Morris also plans to launch a guest program that highlights female roasters.
“This is an opportunity to make my own mark in the small business community of Fort Worth, love our Magnolia and Near Southside neighbors, and support a team of wickedly talented baristas. I’m excited to have one shop, one team, and one concept to fully pour myself into,” Morris said.
As for Craftwork, the brand will continue pursuing its new venture as Craftwork Hospitality Co., building cafés and also offering concierge services within apartment communities. The first of these concepts, Craftwork at The Cooper, opened last November inside The Cooper apartment complex at 1001 W. Rosedale Ave.
“One of our core values is stewardship, which ultimately means that we look to care for the resources that are entrusted to us," Craftwork founding partner and CEO Riley Kiltz said in a statement. "Camp Bowie and Magnolia have both played an integral part in shaping Craftwork, and we want to make sure we care for those communities. We can think of no one better to care for them and the communities they serve. We can’t wait to support Katherine and the Tyers in this journey.”
In an interview, Kiltz said Morris and Tyer will be departing from Craftwork to run their respective shops. Craftwork will also no longer be roasting (though Tyer will continue roasting under a different brand name), thus freeing Craftwork to focus exclusively on building within apartments, rather than juggling several different ventures at once.
"Our customers have enjoyed going to our specialty coffee shops, our hospitality bars, and we also had our roasting clientele, so you're managing a lot of different customers," Kiltz said. "[We asked ourselves] if we could just focus on one of these, what would it be and why? Our conclusion was, coffee shops are amazing businesses; however, they are best whenever they are locally oriented. I've observed just a handful of coffee companies that have pushed the gas on scale, and it's really limited, their end user experience, versus the magic that can be found in a specialty coffee shop whenever you have an owner-operator that's at the helm."
Since the opening of its first café and coworking space on Camp Bowie, Craftwork has often been regarded as one of the first brands that helped launch Fort Worth's now-booming craft coffee scene. The company began taking its first steps into the hospitality industry in 2018, when Kiltz partnered with Trevor Hightower, founder of Houston-based coworking space company WorkFlourish. They opened a café inside the Flatiron|Domain apartment complex in Austin, whose success prompted the company to pursue hospitality even further.
Kiltz said at least four upcoming projects are in the works — one at Camden McGowen Station in Houston, and three with Trammell Crow Residential (Carlyle & Vine in Dallas; Oak Grove, also in Dallas; and Alexan Waterloo in Austin).
Read more about Craftwork's transition from coffee shop to hospitality company here.
This article has been updated from a previous version.
