XIII.

There’s been a lot of activity here in Ashland of late. To start, we’re now in the restaurant business. A few weeks ago, the two women leasing a restaurant beside the Company Store unexpectedly decided to throw in the proverbial towel, so TBAI decided to take on the restaurant in conjunction with the store, à la Cracker Barrel.

In what must be some sort of record, we, under Executive Director Sharon Walden’s leadership, secured a new restaurant manager (with a culinary degree no less), a new waitress, a food supplier, and upgraded the kitchen equipment- all in about 48 hours and with the café missing only one day of business.

The whole thing’s been a trial by fire, with us learning as we go everything from deciding staffing and wages, writing job descriptions, interviewing, hiring, developing a menu, designing the menu, honing our hours of operation, etc. but we’ve been keeping our heads afloat and things are falling into place. The restaurant, “Coal Camp Café,” has been doing brisk business. The kitchen is directly below my office and in the mornings I’m inundated with aromas of bacon and biscuits wafting up through the floorboards.

Coal Camp Cafe

Cafe Manager, Mary Blizzard, and Jade, our new waitress

In addition to its regular business of serving guests (primarily ATV trail riders) the café has also been getting into catering with the idea that holiday banquets will help offset the decline in ATVers that falls in lockstep with the temperature (we had our first snow fall yesterday). In fact, our first catering gig was last week when the US board of MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) was in town to assess their work in the area and deliberate future steps. Sharon and Cathy Rose discussed their partnership with MCC, as board members sat down to a traditional Appalachian meal of pinto beans and cornbread.

The Mennonite muster continued as the following week we hosted Allan Sauder, President of MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates) and Rachel Hess, MEDA Director of Community Economic Development. We covered a lot of ground (both literally and figuratively) in their two-day visit, which included:

• Visiting graduates of our business training program who have started their own businesses
• Sitting-in on a our current business class and meeting our students
• Meeting with our strategic partner, Jim Anderson of the Ashland Group, owners and operators of the neighboring KOA campground
• Touring some of Sharon’s domestic violence and low-income housing projects
• Seeing how our local suppliers at Coal Camp Creations produce their coal figurines
• Visiting the newly renovated Kimball War Memorial (the only remaining memorial built to honor African-American veterans of World War I)
• Eating at some of our favorite local spots

Although the visit was prompted by MEDA, the occasion it afforded to get out and meet with our partners and graduates was beneficial for everyone—myself especially—as I met many of our stakeholders for the first time.

from L to R: Jim Anderson, COO of the Ashland Group; Rachel Hess, Director of Community Economic Development, MEDA; me; Allan Sauder, President, MEDA; Sharon Walden, Executive Directior, TBAI, SHED & SAFE

The business class, incidentally, has been going well. The students, all women, have developed a strong rapport among themselves. They are all very supportive of each other’s ideas and have even begun discussing ways to cross-promote their products. In fact, they’ve grown so accustomed to their Monday evening classes that they have floated the idea of maintaining their gatherings in the form of a business support group.

I guess that should bring things up to speed. Y’all come back now!