A Carrollton coffee shop closed Friday, a decision its owners say was due in large part to an ill-fated arrangement involving the company with which they had agreed to franchise under. That deal ultimately cost them nearly $170,000.

Rickey and Alicia Benefield, owners of Benefield Coffee Co. in the Westover Square shopping center on Maple Street, served their last latte less than a year after the store’s grand opening in 2008. All the while, the Benefields said, they had a steady stream of customers and would actually be making a profit if the company with which they entered into a franchise agreement had not conned them out of $168,000.

The pair originally signed a franchise agreement with Cuppy’s Coffee, Smoothies and More in February of 2007. According to that agreement, the Benefields would pay franchise fees to Cuppy’s and, in return, the company would pay to remodel their store and install all of the necessary equipment, appliances, furniture, even artwork.

Cuppy’s would do all the necessary remodeling and development of the store leading up to the grand opening, and once the work was complete, all the Benefields would have to do was open their doors and start making coffee, according to the Benefields.

But that never happened.

As part of the franchising agreement, the Benefields received pre-approval for a U.S. Small Business Administration loan totaling about $250,000. Of that, they paid slightly less than $168,000 to Cuppy’s for the build-out work. That work was never completed though, and only after Rickey Benefield performed the entire build-out of the store himself, using the $80,000 remaining in the SBA loan, did the couple realize they were in serious trouble.

The remaining amount of the loan was intended to serve as a nest egg of working capital should the Benefields need to tap into it, but the build-out process required they spend all of it just to get to the point where they could open for business in November of last year.

“If we had known at that point, we would have just taken the loss of what we invested and gotten out. I had already built the place out. I didn’t know what to do,” Rickey Benefield said. “That was my turning point. I had to either talk to the bank and convince them to give us the rest of the money or just walk away. We could’ve just walked away. You don’t ever know. I took a chance just to see, and it didn’t work out.”

In recent months, Alicia Benefield said, the store would have turned a profit — a major milestone for any small business — if they didn’t have the additional debt from the SBA loan. Had Cuppy’s held up its end of the bargain, the store would still be open today, she said.

“We keep thinking we’re throwing money into a bottomless pit,” Alicia Benefield said. “We owe so much. We’ll never get out of it.”

The Benefields have little recourse against the company they say took away their business and their livelihood.

Other shop owners who franchised with Cuppy’s have said they too have been victims. But efforts to organize a class-action suit have yet to materialize, Alicia Benefield said, primarily because it’s been difficult finding an attorney with the know-how and the gumption to take on such a high-profile case. And the clock is ticking. The statute of limitations is limited to two years, meaning the Benefields have less than a year to begin litigation or risk never seeing any of the money they originally paid the company.

Even if they were to find an attorney willing to take on a case of this magnitude, there’s no guarantee they’d see a dime of what they paid Cuppy’s.

“You’ve got to get franchise attorneys to handle that but you’re going to pay more money over the attorney fees and you may not get back a dime,” Alicia Benefield said.

Though the store has closed its doors, the Benefields haven’t yet given up hope for a miracle.

A number of store patrons have joined together to try and save the coffee shop, going as far as to open a special account exclusively for that purpose at River City Bank by Food Lion on Maple Street. To contribute, area residents can go to the bank or drop money in a number of buckets around the downtown Carrollton area at various locations, including Gallery Row Coffee Shop on the square.

“You never know. We’ve been praying for a miracle,” Alicia Benefield said.

Rickey Benefield added, “You never know what can happen when a community comes together. You never know. You’ve got to have hope.”