Jenks Boutique Owners Bring Coffee Shop to Main Street
By EMILY RAMSEY
Managing Editor
NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS: The owners of Mint Boutique, Laura Gutierrez, and Michelle Villabrille, will soon open La Leche, a coffee shop and café, next door to their boutique located on Jenks’ Main Street. Mint Boutique offers international and east and west coast fashions and accessories.
EMILY RAMSEY for GTR Newspapers
In July, owners of Mint Boutique in Jenks and sisters Michelle Villabrille and Laura Gutierrez will open their second business venture on Main Street in hopes of tapping an unmet market.
“We always have clients in our shop asking us where to eat,” says Villabrille.
Two months after opening Mint—a trendy boutique that brings in fashion from both east and west coasts—the storefront next door came available. While Villabrille felt hardly ready to think about a second business, her family made the purchase largely due to her parents’ enduring desire to own a coffee shop and café.
The remodel of the next door shop, to be called La Leche, is about to wrap, with its planned opening in July. Customers will notice the café’s nearly full-white interior—its theme being milk bottles, and it will offer the obvious choice: coffee, plus sandwiches and other edibles.
Once the café opens, Villabrille will manage it in addition to holding her current responsibilities at Mint—quite the undertaking for a girl with no previous business experience and whose business partner lives in L.A. While Gutierrez’s home location may prove challenging at times, says Villabrille, it allows Mint to remain on top of trends and to bring the latest in fashion to Jenks.
“We opened in Jenks because at that time there was no shopping other than antiques,” she says. That has since changed with the addition of various specialty shops; however, Mint’s uniqueness still stands alone in Jenks, and arguably also in Tulsa. Its fashions are “a mixture of California and New York styles,” says Villabrille, “with some international fashions being slowly added to the mix.”
The shop’s clothing style has gone from conservative, when it opened a year ago, to an edgier and younger look, Villabrille says. “We have a client who’s from New York who said that our shop reminds her of something in Soho.”
The boutique will soon launch its website: luvmint.com. Its strong Facebook presence has already garnered clients from Australia, Mexico and Germany.
Gutierrez and Villabrille pride themselves on selling one-of-a-kind items. “Once an item is gone, it’s gone,” says Villabrille. “We don’t order more, so people have exclusive items.”
The shops carries graphic tees, bold-print tops, hip hugging skirts, maxi dresses, patterned leggings and other upcoming trends. “The ‘80s trends are big right now: high-waisted items, shoulder pads,” says Villabrille.
For fall trends, she and Gutierrez expect to see tweed, leather, silver—”gold is going away,” she says—dark colors and lace.
Mint is open Mon.-Thurs. 11 a.m. – 7 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 10 a.m. – 7 p.m., Sun. 1 – 5 p.m.
Updated 07-26-2013
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