Nearly a year ago, The Coven adopted a franchising model that its owners said would pave the way for expanding outside of Minnesota. Late last week, the inclusivity-focused coworking company made good on the promise and announced plans to open its first out-of-state location.

The company’s first non-Minnesota location is slated to open in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in October, said The Coven co-founder Alex West Steinman in an interview. Technically speaking, the Eau Claire location is a rebranding of an existing coworking space that had been operating under the CoLab banner. But Steinman sees this as an important step in introducing The Coven brand to a wider market.

Steinman said that her team had started discussions with CoLab’s owners over the spring and summer about a potential rebrand of the space. “We landed on this opportunity to transition from CoLab to The Coven,” she said.

The Eau Claire space will operate as a franchisee of The Coven. Steinman said that her company’s franchising model will provide marketing and sales support for the space, as well as staff training and development opportunities. Steinman noted that CoLab’s ownership group – Eau Claire-based Pablo Group – is also an investor in The Coven.

“Our growth strategy has always been to look for underdog neighborhoods or underdog cities—places that are often overlooked,” Steinman said. “Eau Claire was definitely one of those cities that we were interested in exploring.”

The transition is likely to be a fairly easy one, especially since CoLab already has a similar look and feel to existing Covens. Erinn Farrell, one of Coven’s co-founders, designed the CoLab space, as well as all existing Coven locations to date.

Meanwhile, The Coven has plans to open yet another location in St. Louis Park. That location isn’t slated to open until the second quarter of 2024, Steinman said. Once the Eau Claire and the St. Louis Park locations are open, The Coven will operate a total of five spaces.

Aside from the company’s franchised location on East Lake Street, members can choose to work in any of The Coven’s spaces. “All of our spaces get reciprocity with one another,” Steinman said.

Franchised by the owners of Dogwood Coffee, the East Lake Street location is composed entirely of individual private offices spaces and doesn’t have a larger communal space. Steinman said she’s continued to see strong demand for Coven’s individual private offices. “We’re at capacity in our Eat Street location and in our St. Paul location in private offices,” she said. “We know that people are constantly looking for private office space. … People are kind of sick of working at home, but they don’t want to be in traditional workspaces, so they’re looking for places like The Coven to give them the opportunity to work with like-hearted individuals.”