Opening The WildFlower Cafe

Creating The WildFlower Café and becoming WildFlower Chef Suzi

This wonderful community café was created and built in 2001. The process of creating a successful establishment like this lies in the steps you take getting to opening day.

This is the story of the WildFlower Café and what we did that worked. This place, by the way, sold in 2006, this blog was my way of saying good-bye to an incredible experience.

Location, Location, Location. We thought we had tossed the "location" concept out the window when we chose a town of 400 population for our cafe. Still, we applied tools to determine if we could, at least, survive at this location. Those tools included: Market Research, proximity considerations and timing.

First of all, we did our market research. At a local fall festival we handed out homemade ginger cookies to anyone who would fill out a survey. 135 people ate cookies and responded telling us the kind of food they liked, what their children liked, whether they could use a private family room, how often they would come to the cafe and what they wanted to spend. The survey confirmed our instincts about the area. We would need excellent comfort food and varied ethnic foods for fill in some gaps in cuisine in the area. Mostly, we would need to provide high quality food at the best price possible. We underestimated the need this community had for a place to pull everyone together, our café became the required catalyst.

As for proximity considerations, we looked at the area around us. Mosier rests between two larger towns each with a population of around 8,000 - 12,000. Neither town had a cafe like the one we were planning. We also looked at the fact that Mosier was along Interstate 84 which is one of the main thoroughfares for commerce in the country. The fact that a small town is along the freeway can be a detriment because traffic passes by (not through) the town but Mosier has the advantage of having a stretch of the original old Gorge highway running right through town which brings many travelers through year 'round. The cafe would be build right along that old highway.

We timed the cafe to correspond with the opening of the stretch of the old Gorge highway between Hood River and Mosier. This stretch literally links the two towns for bicyclists and hikers. No vehicles are allowed on the stretch of the road bridging Hood River and Mosier with the exception of a once-a-year run of vintage cars in the spring.

Finally, there was no place in Mosier for locals to dine.

With these factors in place. we proceeded to build the cafe and held our breaths.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2006

Your café kitchen will be determined, in part, by what you are serving. Knowing what your menu will be is a great advantage because you’ll have an idea of how much freezer storage, refrigerator space, grill space and number of burners you will need. In our case, we underestimated the grill space needed for pancakes. Our pancakes proved to be the most popular item on our breakfast menu so it wasn’t long before we were trading out our range for another with a larger grill. Other than that, we ended up with the right amount of space for other food items. If we were to offer French fries we’d need more freezer space but as it is, we use very little frozen food so a house size freezer meets our needs.

We have a large kitchen with a long stainless prep sink and counters on both sides. Our dishwashing system is low temp which requires us to pre rinse dishes but saves in energy costs. a wood top baker’s table under a window provides enough space for all of our desserts and baked goods including numerous biscuits.

We have three ovens but seldom use the two under the range and grill. Our stand-alone convection oven in the prep area takes care of everything we make in an oven. The line is tight so cooks find it easier to run frittatas back to the convection rather than bend over and put them in the oven on line.

In short, the kitchen works well. We had thought that we’d need a very large stand mixer for biscuits or cakes but were proved wrong and sold it back to the equipment place. Our 6 qt. Kitchen-aid mixer works fine for all of our needs.

Upon examination of the menu and consideration for specials we thought we’d be making, we concluded that we could handle just about anything we wanted to make in our kitchen. We are very glad we went with the large walk-in for produce and dairy. At one time we thought we’d go with three refrigerators but this would have been a disaster. In our busy season we will have our walk-in crowded with 4 cases of lettuce, 7 cases of eggs, 16 gallons of milk, plus all of the other dairy and produce needed not to mention 4 - 5 gallon buckets of soup. You want the company selling you all of your kitchen equipment, shelving, sinks and dishwasher to be included in the kitchen design.

One regret: our kitchen floor. Our floor was revolutionary. Paint chips were mixed with a strong paint and even tossed onto the paint while still wet. A polyurethane coating was poured over the dry paint. The effect gave us traction without divots which would hold dirt. It looked beautiful but with any give to the under flooring, and there is considerable, the paint breaks up. Now, we have patches where the surface gave.

We are at the point where the café is finished. The dining room is painted with Red Fox color and a kind of ocre or camel color with accents in marsh green. Over the past 4 years we must have given the paint information to hundreds of people. Someday, someone will wonder if the same painter painted most of the homes in Mosier built between 2001 and 2006.

Up to opening day, we were purchasing and programming a cash register system, creating menus, ordering food and beverages, training wait staff and having cook staff train us. Nerves are twitching enough the days before opening without the one main cook giving notice two days before opening because the hospital offered him benefits. That’s another story. We did talk him into working through our first weekend and soon realized that everything works out for the best.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2006

Now for the history of the design of the café and how the charming town of Mosier influenced that design.

Our friend Dennis Biasi took one look at the Fruit Growers Building in Mosier and sketched a design for the café to reflect the structure of the this historic building in the center of town. We believe that part of the character of a town lies in its architecture. That architecture defines a town’s sensibility and pride. Mosier is fortunate to have preserved its original school building, post office [which used to be the bank until a fire burned all but the vault], library, church, Mosier House (home of the town’s founder), Grange, YWCA, a cabin and a few other stick buildings privately owned that have not yet been demolished. These buildings reflect Mosier’s rich history. They are buildings in front of which people and poets can dream of the past and imagine, romantically perhaps, good times contained within. The preservation of vintage buildings also makes a statement about a town’s pride in its history and awareness of future generations that will benefit from seeing the old craftsmanship and materials of the past. The Fruit Growers Building is an absolute gem that is still utilized year round by the growers, but most actively at harvest time when equipment rolls out to the orchards and returns with fruit for shipping. As of yet, no one has spoiled its rich interior with remodeling.

You can see this building from the café. and most who dine here think the café is a restored older building..

The building was designed by architect Gary Larson and junior. partner Rich Brooks (who has since gone to another firm) of BML Architects in Portland, OR. Starting with Biasi’s idea, Larson and Brooks designed the building to be compatible with the Fruit Growers building and to seat 53 patrons comfortably. Having a private dining room that seats up to 12 around a long table, dictated a certain square footage and footprint. We wanted open dining in the main room for a community feel. We envisioned locals meeting here, greeting friends and having the feel they were all sitting together when at separate tables. Originally, we planned for 2 booths to add more of a café feel, but were able to have more tables without the booth structures.

To further the antique effect of the building, we bought lumber from the deconstruction of a 100-year old granary that coincided with the café’s construction. Our friend, Jim Primdahl, found 2 X 10 old growth Douglas fir boards stacked flat 20’ high in a grain storage building that was 30’ x 50’. These boards had created walls to hold back heavy grain and were nailed together. He simply cut them in 4’x 34’ sections and we laid them on edge right across our foundation. The entire building is built on this 10” thick clear grain fir flooring.

The exterior of three of the walls are board and batten from wood removed from the exterior of the granary. The white washed side of the boards were turned over so that the untreated side, a rich rusty tone, would be exposed on our building for the first time since they were cut. At the point these boards reach our desired weathered look, we’ll coat them with weatherproofing.

Mosier is a community that attracts tens of thousands of visitors a year. The charm Mosier expresses in its architecture adds to the attraction of visitors who constantly look for antique stores and who like to walk around small towns looking at historical spots. Unfortunately, in Mosier, our most interesting landmarks are scattered rather than grouped on a main thoroughfare. On the other hand, for the more adventurous, finding Mosier’s points of interest is like a treasure hunt without a map. We do have a at least one geocache in town to get you here and there have been many articles over the years written about many of Mosier’s hot spots. Among them are: The Twin Tunnels and Old Gorge Highway path, Pocket Park just with its trail through the original cemetery leading to the swimming hole, Rock Creek where wind surfers can launch and hikers can catch the trail along the Columbia River, the historic Mosier House Bed and Breakfast, HWY 30 Ice Cream and Espresso where you can buy a restored vintage Porsche or two, Mosier Community School where you can see the Gismo Museum of Science and two large solar panels in the yard providing electricity and education for the 120 students attending classes, and The WildFlower Café where we boast of the best pancakes in Oregon, best Reuben sandwich outside New York and a great variety of meals made from scratch to accompany our lively and colorful clientele.

Less than a year after we opened, the statewide Downtown Development Association honored the cafe with its annual development award for what we have brought to this wonderful community. (can we add a link here?) This prestigious award is given by the State of Oregon to businesses and individuals who enhance a town or city’s downtown.

The WildFlower Café was sold in the summer of 2006 and remains a GREAT memory for hundreds of people in the Columbia River Gorge.