KENT — One of the mainstays of downtown Kent celebrated an important milestone this summer. Kent Coffee and Chocolate, opened by Sandra Champlain when she was 25 years old, turned 20 on July 4.The idea for the shop came to her on a visit to her mother, Marion, all those years ago. Champlain had graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and was working in the hospitality industry, sometimes cooking, sometimes in management. She even worked on the Mississippi Queen river boat. But, she said, she had a dream of opening a restaurant.“My mom used to be a flight attendant in the Air Force, back when the Air Force had flight attendants,” she said. “She said one of her favorite things, after the passengers were asleep, was to sit down with a Hershey bar and a cup of coffee.”She and her mother scouted out Main Street in Kent, watching the traffic patterns. The building that now houses her shop used to be a consignment shop. Located just feet from the main intersection in town, it seemed the perfect gathering place.Champlain said her favorite class in school was chocolate and that she considers it her specialty. “I felt the combination of coffee and chocolate would work because all year ’round people buy coffee, and in the slow winter months, there are a lot of chocolate-giving holidays,” she said. “We just went for it, and 20 years later, it still stands.”Champlain has found a successful business formula that has survived a singularly tough economic climate.“What’s worked for the past 20 years is the same good quality coffee from a local roaster, great customer service — people meet up at ‘the coffee shop’; we’ve had the same customers — and chocolate,” she said.And while the combination is a winner, Champlain isn’t just coasting on her success.“It’s tough in this economy,” she admitted. “But I’m committed to keeping it open.”Champlain said she is adding things to make her customers more comfortable — WiFi, new furnishings, a website where customers across the country can order her chocolate. She has also created a CD, “The Law of Chocolate,” that is part folk tale, part history lesson, part guided meditation.“The CD covers the history of chocolate, where chocolate comes from, how it’s made into what we know and love, the health benefits, chocolate’s role in the rain forest and a 15-minute guided meditation,” Champlain said. “You imagine your dream life and at the end you have to bite a piece of chocolate to activate it.”Kent Coffee and Chocolate is at 8 North Main St. Call 860-927-1445 or visit www.kentcoffee.com. “The Law of Chocolate” is available on iTunes and at www.amazon.com.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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