Small Business Profile: Julie Keane of Ivy Café and Ivy Express
The inspiration for starting a new business can come from just about anywhere. For Julie Keane, it began during a stroll while traveling in Berlin.
“I came across this tiny soup shop — it was probably 150 square feet — and there was a line out the door and down the street,” she says.
“The proprietor’s business model was so simple. She only made soup and bread, and she closed when she was sold out. And I remember thinking, ‘Man, that’s so cool.’ I thought that I would love to do something small like that.”
Keane didn’t immediately rush home and open a soup shop in her native St. Louis, but the seed had been planted. In the meantime, she continued her career in sales and business development, which often took her to California. “I got to visit all these cool places, including San Francisco, which is of course known for its amazing sourdough,” she says. “You can’t really find sourdough like that in St. Louis, and that stuck with me.”
These various sources of inspiration eventually led her to open Ivy Café in Clayton, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, in 2022. And while the café was not as small as the soup shop that inspired her so many years prior, it does follow a simple philosophy.
“Everything we make in our kitchen is from scratch,” Keane says.
“That’s what makes us unique. We bake all our bread in-house, we make our own syrups for our coffee drinks, all of it. You might be surprised how hard it is to find restaurants that don’t carry a lot of processed foods.”
Ivy Café’s signature items are its tartines: open-faced sourdough toast topped with various ingredients. Keane says her current favorite is the Cromwell, which features morel mushrooms, house-made hummus and goat cheese. “It’s really light and wonderful,” she adds.
Not long after opening Ivy Café, Keane noticed that she was drawing regular customers from the recently completed Commerce Bank Tower, which sits directly across the street. “People from Commerce were some of our first customers — if not our very first — at Ivy Café,” Keane says. “I’m super grateful, because I don’t know where we would be without them. I feel a personal connection to Commerce for that reason.”
Among her frequent customers at Ivy Café were Commerce Bancshares President and CEO John Kemper and Chief Financial Officer Chuck Kim. “We had built a great rapport and working relationship because I would see them so frequently at the café,” says Keane.
“One day, the conversation got started with Chuck about the need for a coffee kiosk in the lobby at the Tower, and he asked if I would be interested. I said yes, absolutely, I was very interested.”
In time, Keane turned those initial conversations into a reality, and in January 2024, she opened Ivy Express. The location offers coffee, tea and matcha drinks, as well as a frequently rotating selection of sweet and savory pastries, which Keane says have proven very popular.
Keane says Ivy Express has a similar philosophy to Ivy Café. “Both are sophisticated, calming and peaceful,” she says. “They’re also very welcoming. Come as you are, and we’ll welcome you with a hug.”While the most popular items at Ivy Café change frequently, Keane says the sourdough sliders—beef with cheddar cheese, bacon and avocado mayo—are among the café’s best sellers lately. “They’re just fantastic,” she adds. “Like everything else, they’re fully from scratch.”
The restaurant’s most underrated dish, according to Keane, is the sea bass. “We aren’t a seafood place, so it’s not commonly ordered, but I would say it’s better than any sea bass I’ve ever had,” she says.
“We fly our fish in fresh three times a week, and the way we prepare the sea bass is incredible. If anybody wanted to come in for an exceptionally wonderful meal, I would recommend that dish every time.”
Keane has also noted that customers who frequent Ivy Express during workdays are also visiting Ivy Café more often. “I’ve seen familiar faces from the kiosk pop over after work or come by for dinner, and that’s been really nice,” she says. “I don’t know if they would otherwise know about us or if we would be on their radar.”
While both of her locations are doing well, Keane notes that being a restauranteur always comes with challenges. “Everyone who warned me that this would be a lot of work…they were right,” she says. “It can be super overwhelming at times. And in the restaurant industry, nothing is consistent. There’s not a consistent number of guests each day, not a consistent staff, not a consistent favorite item that people order. It’s stressful, but it’s absolutely worth it.”
Keane also describes her work as being deeply gratifying. “Our job — and I try to teach the staff this all the time — is to deliver happiness,” she says. “We have hundreds of opportunities every day to make people happy, and that’s amazing. Hearing people say eating at Ivy is one of the best experiences they’ve ever had, that will bring tears to your eyes.”
To find out how Commerce can help your small business, visit commercebank.com/smallbusiness.
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