Westby Blend: A grand opening
Coffee, tea, and Koselig, were the main ingredients in a grand opening held last week at the Westby Blend, located in Westby, Wisconsin, just North of Viroqua in Vernon County, Wisconsin.
Owner Monica Orban and her daughter Evelyn Sumer, had a soft opening on December 2nd to get a feel of how things would run. “I just happened to have food safety because I was the event coordinator for Organic Valley for 7 years. I did all their trade and consumer shows, so I had to have that. We opened softly just to see how it goes. That’s when we decided we were going to keep this very simple and we will have our grand opening later. I’m so glad that we did that because we have our process down because it is just the two of us. We don’t have any other employees,” Orban said.
This story has quite the unique beginning though. One that deeply involves family.
About six years ago Orban and her husband bought the building Westby Blend occupies specifically because there is an apartment above it. “My youngest child is special needs and has low-spectrum autism and needs to be independent. That apartment is for her. We opened a studio and art gallery (Nisse House of Art opened in 2013), hoping that we would gain her skills in arts because she is an incredible artist and musician. She helped me run the art gallery to gain skills and independence. That is my youngest child, the one who runs the business (Westby Blend) with me is my oldest child,” she said.
Eventually, Orban’s youngest daughter, at the age of 27, overcame the fear of driving, got her license and a car, and moved to Wisconsin Dells to be with her girlfriend. The move would eventually find her landing a job at the Ho-Chunk hotel and blossoming. Orban noted that is pretty typical of a child with low-spectrum autism, they tend to struggle less in the mid- to late twenties.
With her youngest now on her own, Orban needed to make some decisions. “I was like, ‘what are we going to do?’”
A professional gardener by profession, Orban spends all summer long outside, and in the winter, she was spending her time in the art studio and gallery creating terrariums, bonsai, topiaries, and miniature gardens. “We put the buildings up for sale, but my eldest daughter works with me in the garden, and I said, ‘Let’s go ahead, I hate closed buildings and the retail space was closed.’ The reason the retail space was closed was because the other daughter moved. My other daughters, my eldest and my middle daughter moved here with our grandkids. I was trying to balance how to be a grandma. All of a sudden, I went from them living far away to being here every day. My son in law looked at me and said, ‘you are a stay at home grandma’. I went, ‘Oh my gosh, you are right.’ Meanwhile, I was gardening. I hired my oldest daughter Evelyn because she is a single mom of a 5-year-old and 3-year-old. I said, ‘I can’t work and watch kids, but we can tag-team them’ I could hire my daughter and watch them in the summer. During the school year they are in school. I said, ‘this winter we could pop-up that coffee shop, we got that kitchen going. Let’s just do that.’ She said, ‘okay’, but I said, ‘you have to do the café end’.”
So, Orban’s daughter started making the soups and the sav and waffles. The two figured they would keep it simple.
See, Orban had always carried the thought of putting in a coffee and tea bar with the art studio and gallery. “I’ve been thinking about it for years. We went ahead and built a kitchen out of an office space in the back. It’s a licensed kitchen. I am a find what you have on hand and use it. That kitchen is literally made out of things that we left here and that were given to me. I look at this kitchen now, and say, ‘Wow, that is so cool’. Even the tile, there was some tile here, and I went to the resale store and gathered up tile and made a mosaic.”
Orban has always wanted to try a social experiment where a suggested price was posted but customers could pay what they could afford. She acknowledged that in a community like Westby, there are elderly who are barely making it, college students who attend colleges in La Crosse that are renting and barely making rent. “They can come in and pay what they can. That has been working very well,” she said.
With the reopening of the Nisse House of Art with the addition of the pop-up café and spring approaching, Orban said that the current plan is to be open until March 30th. Orban and her daughter will then go right back out to gardening. She stressed that if this is wildly successful for Westby, and Westby really supports the Westby Blend, she and her husband will be willing to hire someone to run the café and help manage it while Orban is out gardening. “If my daughter (Evelyn) wanted to, she could do it, but she surprised me by saying ‘I want to garden with you’. I think that is awesome. We will see what God has. We still have the buildings up for sale. Maybe someone wants to buy it and continue it like this. I’ve often looked at a cooperative. I’ve always wanted to say, ‘hey, I would gladly do workshops and events in here and have two other women do the coffee and café and we’d all be employee owners.’ I’m open to suggestions and ideas,” she said.
Orban’s son who is a chef in Michigan, was offered the opportunity and is considering it. She said the buildings are going to continue one way or another, and has a feeling that it is going to continue as a coffee and tea bar because it is becoming very successful.
“I find it really encouraging that every day there are more and more people coming in. I don’t even think we hit the local paper yet: Westby Times and Cashton Record. I find people who are coming from Soldiers Grove, Gays Mills, Cashton, and Coon Valley. I don’t know why its been all the outlying areas,” she said with a smile.
Local resident Simon Stumpf brought his children along with his friend Colin Crowley and his children all from DeForest, Wisconsin to the grand opening. “We live two miles into the country. We love coming to Westby for the pool in the summer, and now we will come here in the winter. My children know Evelyn’s kids from school. We’ve been hearing about this coffee shop, but haven’t been able to get here, but here we are. We are really excited to have a spot to hang out. The live music is the icing on the cake. I did not know that live music would be set up. It looks like this will be a spot we keep an eye on and get our music fix,” Stumpf said.
Sharing his friends delight, Crowley added, “We are good friends with Simon here who lives between Viroqua and Westby. We travel here to visit a couple times a year. We love Viroqua and the Driftless region. I had a good weekend here with my two kids. We went sledding and decided to come here for the opening. It’s great! This is the first time I have actually been in Westby. It’s neat to see the town. This is a great space and a great cup of coffee. The kids love the hot chocolate.”
Customers were also treated to live music from the likes of musicians Tim Eddy (Westby), Christina Dollhausen (Viroqua), and Jay Hoffman(Soldiers Grove).
With Orban’s daughter Evelyn Sumer holding down the kitchen, there is quite a bit of work involved. “I support my mom in a lot of various roles around the shop. I primarily make the soups here. For years, making and feeding people soups has been my love language, so that’s the role that I took on. I’m kind of back of the house and she is more of the front of the house, but I float as needed.”
Westby Blend’s menu would not be complete without its baked goods of course, and is all about supporting local business. “My mom had heard that Kvarnström's Bakery had the best scones, so she ended up reaching out to them. I think she knows them in the community as well, but from word of mouth, she heard that they had the best scones and are the most decadent. She reached out to them. Joyce Kvarnström Bakery came down and talked to my mom and went over things that would pair well with coffee and tea. Everything has been great, and well-received by customers! It’s awesome!” Sumer exclaimed.
Enjoying working closely with her mother, Sumer said, “I know when the ground thaws, my mom and I want to go back to gardening because we really have a passion for being outside and gardening. We do it at a few different households in the area. My mom does garden design and we both implement and maintain. The future of the business depends on how the community supports it. We will stay open if we can afford to hire someone to be here and we can still garden and manage.”
When asked what the business means to her, Sumer replied, “For me, it’s being able to work with my mom and be a full-time single mom to my kids. A place where I can work and bring my kids. Being more active in the community, this is a good spot to get to know people. People don’t just come in and leave. People come in and hang out for a while. They will sit down and do a puzzle with me or play board games. It’s nice to get to know people. We don’t know a whole lot of people.”
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