Café is baked into community
Staff writer
A cafe is an important part of any town, but it takes on deeper meaning when it’s the only eatery in a town of 88. Such is the case for Main Street Café and Bakery in Durham.
Durham is isolated even for rural Kansas. Its main street, Douglas Ave., consists of little more than an auto-repair shop and a post office. A few pretty but vacant storefronts round out the area.
Douglas Ave. also is home to Main Street Café, which looked as if it might go the way of the vacant storefronts in 2019, when flooding and sale of the building shuttered the store for six months.
Given the cafe has served Durham since the 1920s, it was a difficult period for locals.
“I think local people realized … how much your local community depends on a place where you can come and sit down and have a cup of coffee,” said Mark Wiebe, a man with a square jaw and piercing blue eyes who bought Main Street Café with his wife, Kris, that August.
After buying the café, the Wiebes spent months repairing flood damage, repainting, and tinkering with the store’s layout. They opened the café up again in early 2020 to the relief of the community.
The couple didn’t look to change much from previous ownership. They kept the old name with the addition of “and Bakery” at the end.
“We changed focus just a little bit from what we had,” Mark said. “Came in with some of our own recipes.”
The Wiebes bake all their bread in-house.
“Everything is made from scratch, except for the biscuits we use for biscuits and gravy,” Mark said.
Cinnamon rolls are a popular seller. Light, autumnal, and not overly sweet, they pair excellently with a hot coffee.
Lunch also is a big draw; the café has a much larger menu than one might expect. Main Street’s hamburgers, brisket, homemade pie, fish sandwiches, and salad bar all have their devotees.
The Wiebes offer homemade sausage as well, though it’s perhaps not the staple it was for previous owners, who went as far as to paint “Specializing in Sausage” on the café’s front entrance.
With so many ingredients used, one might wonder how Main Street Café stocks them all.
“During COVID, it was a little tough,” Mark admitted.
The café’s main supplier is Evco Wholesale Food, based out of Emporia. They also buy from Sysco and purchase a few key ingredients each week from farmer’s markets.
Kris and Mark arrive at 6:30 each day. Mark flips the griddle on while Kris gets started on the rolls.
At 7 sharp, the store opens, and the Wiebes greet their first few customers, mostly local farmers who come in for coffee and eggs and to shoot the breeze.
“In a small-town café, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what we like to see.” Mark said. “You hear ’em laughing, enjoying their time. That makes it worth it.”
The Wiebes never actually planned to purchase the café. They were simply the right people at the right time.
Kris had sold her baked goods at various farmer’s markets for more than 17 years.
Shortly after Main Street shut down, a woman turned to her in church and suggested she take over.
“We had never planned on it. But both of us, without even talking about it much, we had the idea that maybe we should do this,” Mark said. “I don’t know; we always liked their food.”
While Kris and Mark are the only full-time employees, Main Street hires 14 part-time bakers and cashiers. About five employees work each shift.
“It’s a lot of people from our Mennonite church,” Mark said.
Faith is important to the Wiebes, and they try to instill Mennonite values into their business.
They offer some traditional Mennonite foods, like bierocks. “Mennonites like good food. And a lot of our women are very good cooks, so we carry some of that in,” Mark said.
Upholding their values also means keeping Main Street “a clean, nice environment,” as Mark said. This means both spotless floors and zero swearing.
The busiest times for the cafe are Friday evening and Saturday morning buffets, which seemingly draw half of the population of Durham.
“We get people in from an hour away,” Wiebe said.
At other times, Durham’s tiny population means customers are few and far between.
“If we were in Salina — or even Hillsboro, for that matter —we could serve more people,” as Mark said.
But the business understands what Durham’s really about — a small, religious community that works hard to hold itself together, and which bakes some exceptional cinnamon rolls to boot.
“We have a very good customer base,” Mark said. “I’m not talking good like it’s huge, but that it’s very good people coming in. We appreciate them.
“The ones that we learn to know well enough, we can see them drive up or walk in, and we start their food, ’cause we know what they’re going to order.”
That kind of harmony between cook and customer is Durham to a T.
As Mark concluded: “You don’t come here to shop at Wal-Mart.”