Collegiate Times

Dawn Donson, owner of Lucie Monroe's coffee shop in Christansburg, heats water beneath coffee grounds in a special vac-pot. The shop is known for its "cupping bar", where customers can be served freshly dripped coffee right in front of them.

The menu items of a local coffee shop cover four rectangular chalkboards, and nearly every lowercase “i” is dotted with a paw print.

Yet Lucie Monroe’s offers nothing in the way of animal merchandise, though owners Gary and Dawn Donson did look to their pet to inspire the coffee company’s name.

“Boxers are a funny dog to start with,” Gary Donson said, “and they’ve got the little tiny waist. And we named her after Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe — a little bit funny, a little bit sexy.”

Lucie Monroe’s opened two months ago in Christiansburg’s Gateway Plaza just off U.S. 460 East. Construction cones guide vehicles around its choppy asphalt sea, and several other storefronts were only recently occupied by enterprises such as Pathway Christian Academy and Virginia Techniques gymnastics center.

Although Gary Donson called the area up-and-coming, he and his wife initially doubted the plot.

“What a friend of ours did, he pulled up the demographics and we’re waiting for him to say, you know, ‘This is awful,’” Gary Donson said. “He goes, ‘You couldn’t have picked a better location.’”

The coffee shop, Gary Donson said, has managed to carve out a niche for itself because the nearest Starbucks is located down the road near the New River Valley Mall and other local names don’t even brush shoulders with the highway.

The Donsons migrated to southwest Virginia in 2008 only after a trek across the Atlantic failed.

Indiana natives, the two were part of Muncie Alliance Church, whose pastor opened coffee shops as conduits for starting new ministries. The Donsons learned about the complexities of the coffee business through weekend workshops with the barista-pastor. An Ireland connection sent a church team, which included the Donsons, overseas to talk with locals about java’s unifying power.

Mrs. Donson said the divisions between Protestants and Catholics fizzled inside coffee shops.

“At this point I knew in my heart that Gary and I were going to do coffee,” she said. “Do coffee and community.”

Dawn Donson was ready to pocket her high school teaching career, and Mr. Donson would check out of the hospital where he managed the IT department.

“We put our house up,” Dawn. Donson said. “We were going to move. And things just didn’t click, you know, for Americans to go over and start a business.”

But Dawn Donson’s cousin, Terri Shaffer, knew where they could root their dream. Terri and her husband, Chuck, own The Weigh Station, which is also in the Gateway Plaza. The Weigh Station develops physician-managed weight loss programs for clients. The company now shares walls with Lucie Monroe’s.

“Chuck said he would love to be able to offer Weigh Station-friendly drinks and food to our patients,” Mrs. Shaffer said. “And we had the space, so it kind of started from there.”

Of course, the Donson’s initial visit to Christiansburg was laced with apprehension.

“I (wanted) to hate it,” Dawn Donson said, “… because Ireland didn’t work out, and I didn’t want to, I guess, be hurt again.”

Instead she said they felt an overwhelming peace, which has yet to falter.

“The community here has just been very sweet, very — open-armed,” Dawn Donson said. “It’s just real natural.”

Along with Weigh Station patients, students from the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine are amongst the ardent Lucie Monroe’s customers.

Second-year VCOM student Alec Sharp said he and his girlfriend saw a grand opening sign and ventured inside. Sharp said he’s now at the shop three or four nights each week, and he’s actively spreading the word to his colleagues.

“Med students are like parasites,” Sharp said. “We’ll go wherever we can. Anything that’s open late that has Internet and coffee.”

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A version of this article appeared in the Mar 30 issue of the Collegiate Times.