UPTOWN — Along with the closure of its flagship location in Logan Square, Owen+Alchemy announced it would not be opening in the Lawrence House in Uptown.
The juice bar and plant-based food cafe was announced as the winner of the #FLATSproject, a contest geared at growing small businesses and giving it a retail space in a FLATS properties, at the grand opening for the renovated Cedar Street property at 1020 W. Lawrence Ave. last June.
"We thoroughly understand Owen+Alchemy's current shift in the health food marketplace, and we are still working on alternate concepts that fit the direction of her business," Mark Heffron, a managing partner at Cedar Street, said via email.
Owner Anne Owen announced via Facebook, her team would be closing its location at 2355 N. Milwaukee Ave. indefinitely "in order to focus on wholesale R&D and the evolution of healthy, sustainable + conscious beverages."
"It’s our hope that in the future, a more broad audience will have access to the planty concoctions that we’ve been mixing up for the past two years," she wrote on Facebook.
Owen+Alchemy is known for selling cold-pressed juices, nut milks, kombucha, snacks, nut butters and herbal vials. The shop also offered cleanses ($65 per day for a six-juice supply), monthly memberships and subscriptions. Its line of designer juices sold for $10-$12 per 16-ounce bottle.
It defeated Stock Mfg. Co., Eric Shrospire Photography and Sit Social to win the "Small Business and Community Accelerator Project" designed to give an entrepreneur the opportunity to kick-start a small business with more than $100,000 in benefits, which includes a year of free rent.
While the company focuses on the shift, "there are no immediate plans for new relocations," Owen said Wednesday.
Cedar Street is "not in a position" to give further details about the alternate concepts and was not prepared announce additional tenants, Heffron said.
"We are encouraged by recent progress in our efforts to populate these spaces with the right tenants" and look forward to the opening of Larry's, a lounge slated to open "in the very near future," he said.
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