Sit Down owner decides not to stay a while
Staff writer
Kirsten Dahlgren came to Marion for family. Now, she says, she’s leaving for the same reason.
Having been in town for 13 months, Dahlgren is selling the building that serves as her residence and coffee shop, The Sit Down.
She wants to move back to the East coast — either south New Jersey or Pennsylvania — and buy a house together with her oldest son and his fiancée, she said.
Dahlgren did the same thing with her own parents.
“For the young, it’s really hard to get a foothold with housing these days,” she said. “To have a family is so costly.”
To afford a new home, she is selling The Sit Down, which has been on the market for two weeks.
She aims to sell the property and business as one, employee Claire Bradfield said, so her baristas can remain employed.
Before moving to Kansas, Dahlgren lived in Vermont, where she still owns a tubing and kayaking business. Before that, she co-owned a restaurant in upstate New York.
While two of Dahlgren’s three children live back east, daughter Dru Day calls Gardner, Kansas, home, having moved there to live with her fiancée, who she met though an online video game.
In early 2024, Dahlgren planned to move to Gardner to be close to Day. But then, as she put it, God intervened.
“When I Googled ‘houses in Gardner,’ that house in Marion popped up first, and it caught my eye,” she said. “That’s why I say it had God all over it.”
Marion was a far cry from Vermont, where Dahlgren lived next to mountains, rivers, and maple trees.
But she thought the two-story property sounded like a steal and bought it without thinking twice.
“We’re driving out here, me and my boys in the U-Haul, and I was kind of chuckling, because I’m going through the Flint Hills,” Dahlgren said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, my goodness, where did I choose to live?’”
But she soon took a liking to her new surroundings.
“I know some people here complain that everything’s flat,” she said. “But it has its own beauty here.”
Dahlgren knew she wanted to start a coffee shop on the first floor of the home before she arrived in town. She missed the regulars at her old restaurant, and the property had equipment, such as an espresso machine and a metallic ice cream display case left over from a prior coffee shop.
While Dahlgren, by her own admission, didn’t know much about the intricacies of coffee — “I’d never even had a latte when I opened,” she said — she learned how to make frappes and dirty chais, hired and trained baristas, and designed a large food and drink menu.
While she said she’s received “nothing but positive feedback” from the community, business hasn’t been spectacular.
Dahlgren has tried karaoke nights, trivia games, and hours stretching long into the evening to attract more customers, but her clientele still “doesn’t represent the full population of Marion,” she said.
She has, however, found the regulars she so desired in a group of older men who drink coffee together in the mornings.
“One of them told me one day I was an answer to his prayers because I opened the shop,” she said.
During what could be the final weeks of The Sit Down, Dahlgren is trying a streamlined strategy to draw more business.
“I’m cutting down on the food, and we’ve expanded our drinks,” she said. “And I’m going to adjust my hours. There’s no point in me trying to stay open till seven, hoping people are coming.”
Asked what advice she’d give a replacement coffee shop, Dahlgren shared a few ideas.
“I do think they should have food,” she said. “I did well for a while last year and into the winter with certain sandwiches.
“And I wouldn’t change our espresso beans for anything.”