Thanks For Your Patience

We promised we would open the Coppei Coffee shop this summer and we are. In just a few weeks, we'll have our soft opening and later on our grand opening for what we hope will become Waitsburg's "third space," your living room away from home.

This week, we're introducing the members of the team - general manager Marc Bru and the core staff, including Nichole Wood, Lindsey Thomas and Sarah Groffman (see story on page 7).

It's been a great journey so far. Ron Smith of Northstar Construction and his crew have done a phenomenal job transforming what we call the Mock Building and a portion of the Times building into the town's new public "living room."

New construction is challenging. Renovating a historic building, satisfying as it is for the resulting charm and ambiance, can be a lot more difficult than building one from scratch because nothing is straight, new materials have to be integrated with old and every upgrade requires removal as well new installation.

Aside from Northstar's tireless support of our vision and our mission, we've had help from Jubilee Youth Ranch, Builders Resupply, Carl Newell, Stan Bly, Mickey Richards, Val Mudry, Ross Stevenson, Leroy Cunningham, Jim German, Yance Yost, Paul Gregutt and Karen Stanton Gregutt, Rainier Matthee and many, many others.

Getting the building ready, however, was really just the first step.

Now that we are going to open to the public, we need to ask for support from our customers and that comes in the form of:

Patience!

When Coppei opens, not every single thing will be in place. To give you some examples, it will be some time before we open our patio in the back or paint the big mural just inside the entrance. Furniture and decorations might be a bit sparse. The historical newspaper displays will take some time to develop and put together. The same is true for the occasional weekend evening entertainment we hope to offer.

Based on popular demand, we are also exploring the possibility of getting a permit to build a drive up coffee window in the alley behind the building, but that too will take some time to prepare if we get approval.

And with everything that will be in place when we open, we'll need your patience as well.

Our team has plenty of experience preparing espresso drinks but every new piece of equipment, particularly the fancy espresso machine we imported from Italy, takes time to master and we'll need a few weeks to work out all the bugs in our kitchen setup as well.

One more thing. We hope you will understand our price structure.

We're trying to help elevate the coffee culture here by offering true Northern Italian espresso, homemade ice cream and healthy, earthy, tasty lunch items. This requires expertise, equipment and ingredients we feel are a worthy investment and we hope you will share in that by supporting our prices and making our business financially sustainable.

You should expect to pay roughly the same for our coffee drinks, ice cream and lunch items as you do in Walla Walla. As some readers may have noticed, the price of coffee beans has gone up significantly recently. Though we will try what we can to keep prices reasonable, we still want you to have access to the best ingredients.

The good news is that you won't have to drive to Walla Walla to brighten your morning with a great espresso or a fine pastry.

We hope you will let us know what you think of our espresso, food items, retail products and service once we're up and running. As much as possible, we'll try to accommodate personal tastes and needs. For instance, we'll try to offer a few things that are gluten free and non-dairy for customers with these allergies.

The countdown to the birth of Coppei Coffee has begun. Watch for more news here soon or on Facebook for the exact opening date this month.

Thanks for all your patience so far!