The Garden Room
“I remember looking through the door and saying ‘What is God’s plan for this side?’ We all love gardening, so we started calling it the ‘Garden Room.’ My great aunt actually did this mural. She was 72 years old when she did it,” Hiesterman says.
After finishing her sandwich, Wilkens pipes in, “We had a nephew who was a stone layer and lived in Kansas City. He ordered these cement columns for a bank he was working on. They were the wrong size, so he loaded ‘em up and took ‘em home. When he saw the wall, here, he said ‘I know what to put on it.’”
Food for a Crowd
“You never know if we’re going to have five people or 50,” Hiesterman says. In the last hour, no one has walked through the door. And then some days you’ll have 40 for lunch,”
“That is one of the interesting things about being in a small town. You never know how many people you’re going to have. Today we had zero. Two if you count my husband and his friend unloading. We feed ‘em all for free.” Olson says.
“They work for food. All our husbands come in and they work for pecan pie.” The women chuckle at Connie’s comment. The bake shop is a family business, and husbands, children, and even grandchildren do their part.
Serving Others
Many of the customers that walk through the door of Our Daily Bread are not local. They are people passing through, those who find the place online and decide to stop by for the day, or those brought in with organized club events or parties. People stumble upon the place.
They know their best advertising is from the mouths of those who visit.
“You have to serve people well, but they come in and want you to be like the chain restaurant and you’re not.” Hiesterman says. “We’ve had people walk out because we don’t serve a hamburger and French fries.”
“That’s the neat thing, where it’s a town of 150 people, there’s actually three eating places. Us, the Hometown Café - your standard ‘daily special and hamburger and French fries,’ but they close at two o’clock,” Hiesterman warns, “and then on the corner is the quick shop which is open seven days a week ‘till eight o’clock at night. All of us have been well supported because there’s three different things going on and I think the hardest thing was to not see each other as competition, but as complementary.”
Gallery
