A ribbon-cutting ceremony at 9 a.m. Tuesday marked the debut of a Goshen Coffee cart on the first floor of St. Louis County Library's Clark Family Branch in Ladue, giving the district's busiest facility its first in-house coffee vendor. The cart sits near the branch's Post Event Space and will run Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
What's on the Menu
Per St. Louis County, Goshen Coffee's cart offers coffee, seasonal beverages, tea, pastries, packaged foods and grab-and-go treats. According to St. Louis County Library, patrons can also order espresso drinks and grab-and-go items like overnight oats, yogurt parfaits and protein bites either directly at the cart or digitally through QR codes posted throughout the building — letting visitors tucked away in private study rooms or reading nooks skip the line entirely.
The library selected Goshen Coffee Roasters through a formal request-for-proposals process that was originally issued for a full café planned at the upcoming Jaffe Family Branch, before the partnership expanded to include the Clark Family Branch cart, according to Sauce Magazine. The library's research notes indicate leadership met Goshen's CEO at a regional civic event before the procurement bid was formalized.
Serving the System's Busiest Branch
Since opening in July 2024, the Clark Family Branch has become the busiest location in the entire St. Louis County Library system, drawing more than 35,000 visitors per month, per the library district. The 74,000-square-foot, two-story facility replaced the district's former headquarters following a $31.8 million construction project, and it was named for Clayco founder Bob Clark and his family after a $4 million private donation in 2022, according to KSDK.
The branch also marked the final project of the library district's 10-year “Your Library Renewed” capital improvement initiative, which ran from 2014 to 2024 and built six new branches while renovating or expanding 13 others, the library district notes. That decade-long campaign reshaped 21 major library facilities across St. Louis County, positioning Clark as the flagship of a system that increasingly styles its branches as multi-use civic hubs rather than traditional book repositories.
Late Nights for Author Events
The cart's placement next to the 800-seat Post Event Space will let it stay open late for author events and other evening programs, per the same county account. St. Louis County Library hosts more than 100 bestselling writers annually at that venue under a corporate partnership with Post Holdings Inc., which acquired naming rights to the event space and outdoor plaza in late 2023, according to the library district.
Founded in Edwardsville, Illinois, in 2002, Goshen Coffee Roasters is a family-owned, female-led specialty roaster led by CEO Jennifer Hughey, with brick-and-mortar cafés already operating in Edwardsville, Soulard and Glen Carbon, per theSTL. The company air-roasts its beans in Edwardsville and distributes packaged retail coffee to major Midwest grocery chains including Schnucks, Whole Foods, Fresh Thyme, Dierbergs and Straub's, according to KSDK — a wholesale footprint that expanded significantly before the roaster opened standalone storefronts. Goshen's beans already reach one other local youth-focused venture, supplying Café O'Play, a youth-designed café at the Urban Sprouts Child Development Center in University City.
A Full Café Is Coming to Chesterfield
The Clark Family Branch cart is only the first phase of a broader hospitality push. St. Louis County Library plans to open a full-service Goshen Coffee café inside the future 20,700-square-foot Guy and Judy Jaffe Family Branch in Chesterfield, which is being built on the site of the former Samuel C. Sachs Branch following a $1 million gift, per the library district. That facility will feature a full café serving the complete Goshen menu of coffee and food, making it the district's first full brick-and-mortar library café.
For now, the Ladue cart functions as something of an operational test run ahead of that larger build-out. Financial terms of the vendor lease agreement between the library district and Goshen Coffee, along with whether beverage sales will generate revenue shared with the library foundation, have not been disclosed.
