Pflugerville - Hutto | September 2022

THE PECAN STREET COLLECTIVE WAS REALLY JUST CREATED OUT OF A NEED IN THE COMMUNITY FOR THESE MAKERS WHO DON’T HAVE A STOREFRONT TO BE ABLE TO SELL THEIR ITEMS. MARY FOSS, OWNER OF WEST PECAN COFFEE + BEER

PEOPLE

Mary Foss opened West Pecan Coee + Beer and founded the Pecan Street Collective in 2018. (Carson Ganong/Community Impact Newspaper)

Mary Foss Pugerville business owner is invested in the future of downtown A fter living in Pugerville for three years, Mary Foss opened West Pecan Coee + Collective is good for both vendors and downtown businesses. BY CARSON GANONG

PECAN STREET COLLECTIVE Since Mary Foss helped found the event in 2018, the number of downtown businesses participating in the Pecan Street Collective has tripled to six. The collective hosts a total of 25-plus booths from local creators and home- based businesses. The event often features live music. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. First Saturday of each month

focused on gaining traction. “There’s a lot of hopefulness and vision for what [the committee] could look like,” Foss said. “The hope is just that we could all kind of work together to bring more interest and more people downtown.” One idea Foss said she and the committee intend to pursue is the creation of an annual festival down- town that could draw people from across the area. “We think [a festival] will really help to highlight downtown,” Foss said. “And then from there, we’ll have some traction that we can continue to put the idea of coming to downtown as a place to hang out in front of people’s minds.” Beyond downtown eorts and her involvement in the chamber, Foss recently began a program at West Pecan in which a portion of the proceeds from the shop’s in-house- roasted coee beans go to a dierent nonprot each month. Organizations that have beneted from the program so far include the animal rehabilitation nonprot PAWS and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. “We see all the support that we’ve gotten through the pandemic, and we want to make sure and give back,” Foss said.

“People can just walk around, hit up all the vendors, get their coee, do some shopping, gure out that they’re going to get their hair cut at Stylin’ next time, and it generates business as well for the boutiques across the street,” Foss said. Despite a break in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pecan Street Collective is more popular than ever, Foss said. As she adds more vendors to the roster and more downtown businesses choose to participate, Foss said she hopes the event will eventually span much of downtown. “We named it the Pecan Street Collective with the hope that some- day it could be something that was a really big part of downtown, and that people from other towns would hear of it and choose to come,” Foss said. Additionally, Foss became a mem- ber of the Pugerville Chamber of Commerce board of directors in 2021 after having been involved with the chamber since opening West Pecan. When the chamber created its downtown programs committee earlier this year, Foss was asked to chair the committee. Because the committee is relatively new, Foss said its work has mostly

Beer in 2018. Foss said she decided to open West Pecan because she noticed down- town Pugerville had no sit-down coee shops. West Pecan has since become a staple of downtown Pugerville, but Foss’ involvement in bettering downtown did not stop there. Foss said shortly after she opened West Pecan, local vendors began asking if they could set up pop-up stores outside the coee shop. Together with Wink Boutique owner Brittany Parker, Foss started the Pecan Street Collective, a monthly market day where local artisans and home-based businesses could set up booths on Wink and West Pecan’s porches. The Pecan Street Collective takes place in downtown Pugerville from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on the rst Saturday of each month. At rst, Foss said, there was only space for around ve vendors, but over time several more downtown businesses such as Stylin’ Salon and Rues & Rust have joined to lend their space as well, and now

Ceramics N More 101 W. Pecan St., Ste. B • 512-906-0207 Rues & Rust 101 W. Pecan St. • 512-252-9300 Stylin’ Salon & Spa 201 W. Main St., Ste. 101 • 512-251-0054 United Partners Pugerville 102 S. Third St. West Pecan Coee + Beer 100 W. Pecan St. • 512-551-3471 Wink Boutique 403 W. Pecan St. • 512-990-0008

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the capacity is closer to 30. Foss said the Pecan Street

PFLUGERVILLE HUTTO EDITION • SEPTEMBER 2022