All right. Welcome back to the podcast. My guests today are Sam and Lauren. They are the new owners of what used to be 55 North, but now going to be called Island Brew Cafe here in Ketchikan. So welcome to the podcast and welcome to Ketchikan. Thanks for having us and we're happy to be here. So any good cafe has to start with good coffee.
So let me tell or tell me a little bit about your coffee adventure because i know you were in the dominican republic looking for yes yes, well we wanted to have coffee from the islands because i i'm originally from england which is a big island and uh myself and lauren worked on cruise ships for lots of years and so we'd visit all the islands and it's lots of these islands are famous for coffee so we figured alaska's famous for lots coffee probably not the
most famous thing that comes from alaska so we'd find a good selection so yeah it was a big big focus for us to find good coffee and it's an ongoing project so what makes good coffee some people would just say they don't really care between like a folgers and then something that's maybe local so what are you looking for in a good coffee being to make good coffee oh i have milk in mine so i'm a wrong person to ask lauren however drinks black coffee I drink black coffee. Okay.
You're the expert then. It's a lot about the way the beans are roasted, but it's also where they're from and how they're grown. We recently also went to Cabo and at the resort we stayed at, they have a coffee lab. And so we took a class about how to brew like a pro. Part of this class was going into the full flavor profile of a coffee bean. So a lot of times you'll get coffee on the mass market that tastes a little bit burnt or a little bit bitter.
And that's a sign that the bean has been over-roasted or it's just not fresh. So during this class, we learned even more about what defines a good coffee and what notes you want to pick up. So the coffee we've selected that it will be here soon. It's on its way from the Dominican Republic with some of the best coffee we've ever had because it has that full flavor profile. It's not bitter. It's organic. It's not highly acidic.
And it gives you a really nice, robust flavor that if you're like me and you drink black coffee, you're going to think it's like drinking hot chocolate. I can taste the difference too. I know I say that.
We tested it against a lot of different beans that we've had here when we were selecting our coffee too and every single time that bean won so we decided that it was definitely the one we were going to go with and that prompted sam's trip to the dominican republic and he brought back a small test batch and we've tested it out on a few locals as well and every single person was like oh this is the best cup you've brought me so far and that was our dominican beans that will be here nice and what's
cool is they're gonna roast a custom house blend oh cool just for us it'll be similar to their standard roast, the one that you can get in the Dominican Republic, but it will be actually just roasted just for our little coffee shop here. Awesome. I'm not a coffee connoisseur. Are you a tea man, Jeff? No, no, no. What's your drink of choice? I do have tea on occasion. I'm definitely a coffee person. I just can't tell the difference when you talk about flavor profiles.
I know that I like this cup of coffee versus this cup of coffee, but i'm not educated enough to like know why that is but i definitely like appreciate a good cup of coffee and if i'm going to go to a place to stop by like on the way to work or to get you know through the rest of the day then i definitely want something that tastes good i think the the acidity sometimes and the burnt thing i definitely know what you're talking about there yeah and it's i
mean it's just gross it's not very palatable when you have something that's too bitter or something that just tastes burnt and it's just not really worth it like i said a good cafe starts with a good coffee so it sounds like you have that figured out trying hopefully trying our best we're also going to get coffee eventually probably from jamaica there's a brand called blue mountain coffee which is really famous really popular and i'm going to try and try other regions as
well and but to start with we'll just have one and then what about coffee drinks lattes cortados things like that are you going to have those as well or it's going to be straight coffee no we're going to have a full selection so we'll have moccas lattes espressos espresso based drinks because yeah, we've been. Not a big menu, but a decent-sized menu together. Yeah. Give people some options. What's going to be on the food menu there?
Well, we have lots of pastries, which are all baked in-house by our bakery experts, which is not me. It's Lauren and Elaine, who used to work here. Cool. So we kept her. She came with a coffee shop. Yeah, she stayed in Ketchikan, and the Straits were incredible bakers. They had great homemade, house-made baked goods. So that was something we wanted to carry on. So Elaine and I have partnered up and come up with a slightly different menu, but we've test baked a lot of things.
Excellent. You should have been here a couple of days ago. You can have had some cookies. I know. I should have just hung out knowing this is going to open up. You'll see on the pastry menu, the cinnamon buns will be here. We're going to have a savory bun as well, too. There's going to be coffee cake, cookies, some bars. We're going to try and throw in- Gluten-free baking. Yep. Gluten-free. On a specific day or like throughout?
No, no, quite. The goal is to have some things in the case every day that would be gluten-free or allergen-free. The next thing I want to try and get into the case is a vegan gluten-free muffin. We will also have a couple options that will be gluten-free or vegan for breakfast too, like a chia seed oats, or we'll have, I guess not vegan, but gluten-free, also like a parfait, and then some breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos. Which won't be gluten-free.
Well, it could be gluten-free. It won't be vegan, though. We'll have a vegetarian option. We'll have a breakfast burrito with sausage and bacon and eggs in. Excellent. And some lunch options as well. Some lunch options. Some pretty cool sandwiches. A soup of a day we're going to have. Good.
We're kind of borderline a couple healthy options, but then also some of those comfort foods, those feel-good foods, and things that maybe we had eaten more of or had more access to when we lived in Florida or even when we were in England. And we just haven't found kind of that hankering, like that place to find, like to hit that craving here. So we're trying to find some things that are a little different. Yeah, we have a couple pretty decent burger places. We've got some pizza.
But what this town needs is just a really good breakfast burrito. So I'm really excited to hear about the breakfast burrito. And it's not that I have like all of my attention that should go to coffee goes to breakfast burritos, but man, I really love a good breakfast burrito and I take pride in my breakfast. I'm not a breakfast burrito snob, but I definitely like breakfast burritos. So what's, what's going to go on the breakfast burrito?
We're going to have hash browns, smoked bacon. We're going to smoke our own bacon. We're going to have homemade sausage and... Eggs. What else? Cheese? Some special seasoning. Salsa. Okay, good. Yeah, special seasoning. Salsa, southwest side cream. We're going to call it the Lumberjack Burrito because we promised. Well, there's a couple team members from the Lumberjack show that highly requested a breakfast burrito.
And we were like, okay, well, if you are requesting a breakfast burrito, what would you like to see in your breakfast burrito? You know, we can make it, but we want it to serve the community and be something that's needed and wanted.
But that being said if we'd have known you a couple of weeks ago we would have called it jeff the english teacher's yeah burrito but we didn't know i'm sorry journalism burrito yeah so um it sounds like you have a pretty good connection with some of the community members so how did you how long have you been here why did you choose catch a can and how did you get connected with some of the community yeah that's a story i've worked on cruise ships for the last seven years lauren that's how
i met lauren she was training to do do the same job as me on a ship, and then after we got married I did three Alaska seasons so I was here every week on carnival ships and I used to talk to people about shopping and restaurants outside and where to get crab and souvenirs and all that type of stuff and we always wanted to end up kind of retiring off ships and starting a business and I used to before this job my background was I was a restaurant manager for 10 years and then Lauren got offered
a job in Ketchikan so we brought the kids up we did a road trip with a jeep we drove from florida to seattle with the kids and the dog. And as many belongings as we could fit. And yeah, that was it. We gave it a season to see if we liked it here. And we'd been looking to leave Florida. I just weren't sure where that was going to be. We'd also been looking to have some type of a cafe or a restaurant.
Also, wasn't sure where that was going to be because we found pretty quickly that where we were at in Florida just wasn't a great fit for our family. And after a season in Ketchikan, our kids really like it here. It was the bugs, to be honest with you. She says it was the bugs. The bonding with the mosquitoes. It's not the mosquitoes. It's these big flying. These giant palmetto bugs. They're like monsters. And the snakes.
There was nearly an incident one time with an alligator, which I saw, which I wasn't keen about. So why you left Florida, not what you like about here. Sam really doesn't like Florida. No, we really like Ketchikan. I grew up outside of Washington, D.C. in the mountains. Sam grew up in England. And so the weather here doesn't bother us so much. We missed seasons. We like the mountains. We like to hike. We like to be outdoors. Our kids would rather run outside and be cold than be hot.
Like we found our youngest son is really not heat tolerant. So we found ourselves spending a lot of time inside during the summer. Like it was just unbearable in Florida. So Ketchikan has a lot to offer us where we can go outside. We can be part of a small community. And that was another thing we really liked too, was the community nature of Ketchikan. So we got here in April.
And it's been really great getting to know the community. And it's really surprised us how quickly you go from walking into Safeway and knowing no one to your shopping trip taking an extra half an hour because you've bumped into six people that you know. So it's been really nice to just feel welcomed here. I got here. We came in April, but I went to work on the ship for one more Alaska season.
And then I was walking past with Lauren one day and there was a sign that said for sale in the window here.
And then here we are awesome just yeah yeah just it all came together we'd we'd looked at some other places we still were pondering okay well what type of restaurant are we gonna open what space is it gonna be in and yeah we we literally walked by one day and they weren't open at the time and sam was like okay well i'm only here today so can you please like try and get in there this week and i walked in and i met molly and then we talked to peter and we
came back a few more times like i tried their coffee i tried their food and we just kept the conversation going and it was just a really great fit for us i was pretty sad when they said they were going to close down i know yeah because you never know we've got some big shoes to fill like i'll get it like we're we're aware of that and like i do say to people like they were leaving like somebody had to come in so we're gonna try our best yeah um the nice thing too is that some people will come up
and this is kind of consistent anywhere anytime you have new ownership and if you try to be what it was that left that's not going to work out you got to be you you got to be whatever you love to do and your passion has to be expressed in whatever it is that you you put forth so that's great looking forward i'm it's just going to be awesome one of the things about the community is, it's very open very accepting very very friendly i've never had so many friends
in the town no one spoke to us in florida well people spoke to us in florida but not not like here city though It was very different Which is weird Because I spent a couple years Or summers in D.C. Working while my brother Was going to school back there.
And you're surrounded by people you don't really have the connection here even though catch a can and you know saxman the in the outside laying areas equate to 1200 or 12 000 people 15 000 people it still feels like it's a larger community because people are they are they they put an importance on or prioritize getting together and having good community events you got the art walk you got the all kinds of different things we have we're gonna host an artist soon yeah it's those
sort of things make the community great and then this night you become part of it so being a part of that right off the bat is something that's it's pretty important it's huge and our kids like it here they've got lots of friends the education system seems excellent here we can find a nanny if we want to go out we find a babysitter which is nice to leave them at home for a night what's What's your favorite thing to do in Ketchikan outside of prepare this place for business?
We really like to go to the lakes. Hiking. Yep. Carolina Lake and Ward Lake are probably our kids' favorite places. I like to hit some of the more difficult trails, but it is harder to do with our kids being small because they're two and five. So our five-year-old is like a little spider monkey, and she could do a lot of them. But our two-year-old is not quite ready yet. And I've recently found my way to Fast Downs. That's nice. Oh, yeah.
Maybe a community. Yeah, absolutely. In a networking type of way. Yeah, that's definitely a staple. Speaking of kids, though, I do need to go pick up our daughter from school. Okay. All right. So I'm paying. Trusting hands of Sam. Not so trusting. We got the good stuff out of the way now. Now, filler. Yeah, people can stop listening now if they want to. Yeah.
So if you think about like one of the main elements of having a good like relationship with the community like what what type of like involvement do you see yourself having you said you're going to host an artist like what what are you looking forward to uh we're going to host an artist night i also was trying to become one of the uh my little girl jenevieve loves soccer so i was hoping to try and become one of the soccer coaches obviously being
from england i'd say football coach but we'd have a other communication problem you know what i mean oh yeah for sure and we had lots of ideas with i don't know maybe trivia nights and lauren's in the chamber of commerce and yeah we're trying to get around and make as many connections as we can i'm good friends with leslie the colorist from next door she is a who's who of ketchikan she's apparently she hosts great parties she just had a halloween party did
you get an invite oh i didn't go to that one no there might be a christmas one maybe we can go we'll dress up as santa's elves yeah There's so many things going on It's pretty wild It's just quite nice That people invite you out Yeah And it's quite easy To make friends here It's just a different Different atmosphere To what we used to It reminds me actually It reminds me of being on a ship But a huge ship Because you see the same faces All the time.
It's just a little bit more freedom here. There's a lot more to do, obviously, but it's just the same type of, I don't know, I lived on a ship for seven years. So I guess that's how I equate things. It's a people are friendly. It's a good place. What about other areas of Southeast? Did you like, was it Southeast that you kind of looked and then specifically chose Ketchikan or was it just Ketchikan right off the bat? Well, I think Lauren, the job she was offered, it was mainly Ketchikan,
but we could have moved to Juneau. Skagway is a little bit remote for me.
I like Skagway but there's not I can't imagine winter being so lively there's probably about a thousand people in winter yeah pretty cold yeah the weather I mean this I can manage rain because I'm from England but do you know it's too much snow Skagway too small and I kind of I always Ketchikan was always my favorite port because the weather was always nice so you've got the towns are real small close-knit community everything's close but you could walk like
Lauren said, great hiking, great things to do. So given a choice, we're always going to come to Ketchikan if we got to choose, yeah. So here we are. The nice thing about Ketchikan being so small, but also having the airport and having daily flights rather than just one flight, there's multiple flights. And you can conceivably go down to, if you wanted to go down to Seattle for the weekend.
Well, it's funny you should mention that because when I bought this place, I have a bank account, a Bank of America, and they flagged me for fraud. So I had the pleasure of going to my nearest Bank of America, which very time it was in Seattle. So it was convenient that I could just hop on the plane. Yeah. And Ketchikan International Airport is...
Yeah it's good it's huge it's not at all uh it's quick it's quick it's efficient and then there's the food there is a lot better than the juno airport and that's coming down to like taking pride in your work and so you go to the juno airport and just the food quality is not what it is in ketchikan so it's really nice and it takes about five minutes to get through the airport So you've always got time for a pre-flight beer, which I like. That's important.
Yeah, going back to what's not available here, anytime that you get on the phone with a car dealership or insurance, they have no idea how to handle it. I had a recall on my truck and the lady said, yeah, just get on. Apparently, you could take the Alaska Marine Highway, drive that to Juneau, and that's where your dealer got new. I don't think you can. That's not going to work. No, I said, ma'am, the Alaska Marine Highway is water.
So I know she was using Google or whatever to try to get directions and didn't see that that was water and you'd have to take the ferry and it just did not equate. Just way different. You get used to it. Like, for example, we've had to order a load of equipment for here. And we realized quickly you needed an AML account and you ship it to Seattle because you get free shipping to Seattle for lots of stuff. and then you put shipping in here, it's like $1,000. Yeah.
But you get used to it. You get used to the fact there's no Amazon Prime, there's no Uber Eats. I don't really miss those things. You kind of make do all the things we do have here. Yeah, there's some Amazon Prime, it's just not all the full gamut of everything. You don't get it in an hour and a half. Yeah, you don't have a drone dropping it off in 15 minutes. So one of the complications of having a business in Alaska and then especially in Ketchikan is kind of that expense.
So how do you ensure that you have good quality products and you charge enough to stay in business?
But you don't want to. but you don't seem greedy yeah so how does how is that the way we're looking at it and it's the same we're looking at making as much as we can ourself using good quality ingredients having a smaller menu so there's no wastage charging fair prices compared to the rest of town but hoping that people appreciate the quality and they i feel if you're going to give somebody breakfast a breakfast burrito for example if it's good quality people will appreciate the price they
have paid for it not that it's going to cost a lot but they're going to appreciate what you charge for it i think it's all about the quality we're going to bake our own bread so make as much as we can here and hopefully it goes down well in the community yeah i think catch can is definitely a place that appreciates good quality things and then there's whatever that boundary is that's that's above that where it's
like okay this is just more the price is too high more than it's really quality stuff. What's the word I'm looking for? It's just, yeah, it's, I see what you mean, it's like a tipping point, quality against cost. And there's people who will, I mean, just go beyond that. And it was an interesting thing during COVID, how many community members were just.
Very helpful for the local businesses who thought, hey, this is, if we want to have this after COVID, if we want to help these people through COVID, then we got to do what we can to order out or whatever. So it's a very supportive community and we like to have those things. And we definitely feel that things are missing if we don't, if we don't have those. So that'll be fun. But what was your favorite thing to eat like growing up or what was your, your favorite breakfast or lunch?
My favorite thing from England, fish and chips, obviously, but our fish and chips is different to yours but it's still good over here what's the difference uh it just it's just different.
You get one big piece of fish in england okay the batter's different for whatever reason i don't know why but it is what else do we have growing up the biggest of course the biggest thing which i used to love growing up for breakfast was a bacon sandwich but we could talk about this for a while because i appreciate the bacon we have here it's it's good but it's not we have different bacon in england we get it's just different tell me about this bacon because i'm a huge fan of so it's like
have you ever had canadian bacon yeah it's not it's not the same it's different but it's the same sort of shape so it's like your bacon you just get the straight long bit i guess streaky bacon we'd call it streaky bacon that's american bacon yeah okay our bacon you get that bit but it's got the round bit on the end it's i think we call it back bacon okay and it's brined differently just completely different and you can't get it anywhere here which is okay i mean
it's not but it is what it is so is there any way that you could no no i'm no butcher not even like a uh a one-time special that you you know i'd have to talk to you never know, let's not throw it out there because it's a big ask i mean i wish i love english bacon do you know what else i love yorkshire puddings what's in that you don't know you're not familiar no i grew up.
So in england we have something called a sunday roast where you get i don't know roast beef stuffing parsnips which we do get here which is a treat carrots cauliflower flour cheese, roast potatoes, and you have Yorkshire pudding, right? And it's like, I can't describe it to you. Well, I can. It's like a little doughy hat, I suppose, like a top hat. No, it's not. It's a Yorkshire pudding. Yeah, it just is what it is. It's a cultural difference.
It goes with a Sunday roast, which I'm going to have here at my Island Brew Cafe. We're going to do Sunday lunch at some point, because I think people will try.
That will be for you a full english experience with no bacon but yorkshire puddings so the highlights you'll bring over as long as it's applicable or as long as it's doable yeah exactly so we'll have sunday lunch because i wanted to focus the thing i fell in love with about this place was the uh the patio outside here i sat down i had a coffee i loved it so i'm going to put some some covers some vinyl sheets in so people can sit out there year round and And then we'll put some heaters out there.
We'll do a Sunday lunch where you'll get more of a sit-down lunch on Sundays. We'll do brunch on Saturdays, too. But Sunday lunch, we'll make it as English as possible. It's not that different. I feel like I'm setting the bar very high here. Well, I think you have to go on into it. If you start up with some sort of low bar, like, hey, we're going to have coffee, and then maybe some stuff.
The more specific you are, it sounds appetizing. We have lots of ideas, but the Sunday lunch will definitely happen. And the Yorkshire puddings I can make from scratch are very good. We'll do brunch and we'll try and have a small but mighty offering. Nice. Including your burrito, which I know you're a big fan of. That's the most important thing, the lumberjack burrito. I'm really excited for that. And a good cup of coffee. Yes, I can give you those two things, at least.
And a great pastry. You don't have to do a lot.
Good. do like so basically just be dependable if i could show up and get the same quality excellent burrito every single time yes that's how habits are made i agree and i'm the same type of person i want the same i drink i don't i drink the same cup of coffee every day i'm yeah very much into a routine yeah and you because you get to like it that way don't you yeah then i'll vary from it a little bit but if i know that the burrito is very good it's a mistake but i that that's happened
before where I went from it and I found something else that I like just as good. So then you have to change your pace. So if you walk in, you think, man, today's a burrito day. Next day or a week later, you know what? Not really feeling a burrito. I'm going to go to the plan B, which is just as good as a plan A. So I'm super happy. Good. No matter what mood, You're going to have it. Hopefully we can give you a plan A and a plan B and maybe a plan C. We'll try. But no bacon.
Bacon, yes. Amazing smoke. The strip. The strip. The amazing stripped. Wait, was it lined bacon? Flat bacon? Back bacon. Back bacon? Flat bacon. Okay. What do you call the American stuff? What's the American stuff? Streaky bacon. Streaky bacon. Let's not get confused. Regular bacon. Yeah. And your bacon's great. Let's not trash talk American bacon. I'm a big fan. It depends on... Pispy?
Yeah, I think... Smoked? there's some some low quality bacon that's just disrespectful to the bacon world let's be honest yeah i think if you go to the store and you get the pre-cooked cheap bacon there's no excuse for that anybody can cook bacon yeah also if you get bacon and it's more fat than bacon i feel like that's an issue yeah i like the the hemplers nitrate free you just feel like this is a this This is meat and fat from an animal. It doesn't have a cardboard or lab-grown quality to it.
Yeah, that concerns me. Lab-grown bacon could be an issue. At some point, there's probably going to be lab-grown bacon. What's your opinion? Now I'll interrupt you, of course. What's your... Sorry. Now we're talking about bacon. But this is a podcast. We can talk about it. What's your opinion on... You know, they sell chicken, but it's not chicken. Or they sell bacon, but it's like faken. Oh, like the soy-based? Yeah, like how can they call it bacon if it's not?
Like, does it taste like... I don't understand. If you don't eat bacon, why do you want to eat something that tastes like bacon? I don't want to offend our vegan friends here. Because, you know, I like everyone. But... What confuses me is why... or like a plant-based meat is, it looks like meat. So if you don't want meat. But you're going to get something that looks like meat. But you're looking, yeah, it looks like ground meat. I don't understand the marketing thing.
I don't have cheese and like a tomato. Let's just say tomato. But I don't have a tomato that tastes like beef. If I want a tomato, it wants to taste like tomato. Do you see what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah, I don't. I don't you could make it green and make it look like a plant make it like you're eating a plant but maybe there's so many other ingredients and there's so much science involved that it doesn't look like anything and so they just chose meat because that's the closest thing it looks like I'm not sure you need an expert eat whatever you want do whatever you want you know that's why we live here but I don't understand
the marketing of that and I don't understand why it looks like that but it's highly processed and highly, whatever but I will have vegan options on our menu here that's great but no bacon No faking, I'm afraid. No faking. No faking. You got to be legit. You can try. I'm excited about this. What about the hash brown part? You know the ones we like. It's like, it's not McDonald's hash browns. You make them yourself. I'm not going to get you to make them. Obviously, I'll make them for you.
It's like a squashed potato with, you know, smothered potato, you'd call it. You know what I mean? I know what you mean. There's different, some people go with like a large chunk of potato in there. And so it's more like a potato chunk in there rather than like a hash brown. And then there's like finely grated hash brown. That's like they can get really crispy and that's nice and that's added to it. That's what's going to go in your burrito.
That's good. Yeah, the chunk one is fine. Everything has its place as long as it doesn't feel like it's a leftover. How do you feel about the deep fried McDonald's style hash brown? I haven't had hash browns from McDonald's or even McDonald's for years and years. Interesting. You don't have two small children like me, then clearly. I don't know. I have one small child, but she's not even eating food yet. but she's seven weeks, yeah. Seven weeks? Yeah, she's pretty fresh. Oh, good luck with that.
Pretty fresh, yeah, thanks. Only one? Only one, yeah. Oh, well done. At this point, yeah. I've got two. Yeah. They like to hike. They like McDonald's, it sounds like. But only McDonald's every day. I'm not a bad dad. That's not all I feed them. They also like vegetables, fish from Trish. They love all the stuff from there. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Crab. But occasionally, they'll ask for an old McDonald's, as they say. Yeah. So, not very often. I had McDonald's. I grew up on Prince of Wales,
didn't have any fast food over there. There was a Burger King there for like three years. We don't have Burger King here, but we have Burger Queen, right? Yeah, we have Burger Queen. No relation, I presume. So every time we came over here. Very good. I tried Burger Queen. Exceptional. Really good burgers. So every time we came over here for basketball or for any other sport, we'd go to McDonald's like first thing because it was the novelty. Go there and I get the Egg McMuffin and then Big Mac.
You see, an Egg McMuffin, sorry, again, cultural differences. An Egg McMuffin for me is egg and bacon.
But an egg McMuffin over here is egg and this lump of something which they call ham yeah canadian bacon yeah but it's like a slice of ham and then it's a low quality english muffin low quality egg low quality canadian bacon but when you're a kid when you're in middle school high school it's so good you have two of those and you're good to go because your body is resilient and it doesn't reject it but now you have too much of that too many days in a row and all of a sudden and you're
having some trouble with the internal apparatus. Agreed. It's not very good. The nice thing, another nice thing about living here is the opportunity to eat very, very well. You got sea asparagus, you got berries, you got game meat, you got fish, you got all kinds of opportunities to eat. Have you gotten into doing some fishing or hunting or foraging? Genevieve went out to pick berries all summer. She's a big fan of, she's got a special spot where she picks salmon berries from.
So the kids went into that when I was on my ship I would love to go hunting I love to hike.
Fishing is a big i'm a big fan the kids want to go fishing too uh just leaving the ship in the middle of september and opening opening up here we haven't had so much time but when everything's settled especially next season next summer we'll go spend a lot of time outside i need to do some fishing get out on a boat would be nice yeah i actually bought myself from a knife work store in juno for alaskan made knives a special filleting knife
perfect which is still in the box until i catch for salmon so it's going to stay in a box out of principle i told lauren but i was going to catch a fish and fillet it and she laughed at me oh she said no you won't so i will we'll see well it would it would be shocking if a couple seasons went by and you hadn't caught one yet we'd start to wonder hey you might be working too hard that might be the thing if you say hey i'm putting all my time and effort into the burritos i'd say
all right that makes sense i might bring a fish pie that you can fillet even though you didn't catch it that would be kind of no i'll find some time yeah for sure i also like the fact sorry again i interrupted you i also like the fact we have a selection of salmon here we're on from in england we just have farmed atlantic salmon which is just salmon and then you come here and you and you instinctively and instantly become a salmon
snob as i say i am because it's actually it's tastes completely different it's the best salmon i've ever had taking taking pride in your fish it just wants you know that the farmed fish that are fed that and they swim in these huge net pens. It's not healthy. It's not all that different from some of the bad conditions that you get.
Chicken and so like then there's there's like a dead zone underneath these huge nets where you have scales falling off and you have fish with lesions and you just have it's just horribly unhealthy and there's some documentaries that have been done about the fish farms and atlantic salmon it just doesn't sound good i mean you come over here and you look at the actual piece of salmon it's completely different yeah and it costs more and you start to realize this is why it costs more because
it's good and it's worth it my kids will eat salmon every day yeah it's super healthy and it doesn't have a fishy smell it smells like cold salt water and maybe a little bit of fish it doesn't have that you're in iowa at a safeway and you open the door and you can smell the fish department that's not what you're looking for horrible there you go so what else should we know about you two the business the family the what's some interesting insight
interesting insight into me and my family hmm well i'm obviously from england as we've established i spent the last seven years working on cruise ships and got two kids genevieve and arthur they go obviously after school every day here and we like to think we're quite friendly trying to be part of a community.
Yeah we're just a regular regular family really no more kids for sure two's enough you just have one just one yeah are you gonna cap it at one well we'll see i mean there are some mornings there's a man who's already committed to number two there so some mornings we wake up and think you know what this first one hayley is so great you know we think about another one how old is she uh seven weeks seven weeks yeah and then and then other days we give it a few months this is this is there's no
way like there's no way that we can double this so she's sleeping most of the time now yeah she's doing a pretty good job it's all right yeah so yes it's nice at an early age. Just drinking milk. Can't talk back. Before we commit to any decision either way, we want to see this through for the first year or so. That's what we did. Yeah. I think two is a good number, but two is enough. Yeah, we'll see. Do you have any pets, Jeff? Do you like animals? I've got a dog, two cats. I do like animals.
I like when my friends have animals. That way I don't have to have the responsibility. No, we don't have anything. You went straight for the child. We like to go traveling, camping, hiking, go out in the boat and stuff like that. So- Do you own a boat? Well, we got a little skiff. Here in Ketchikan? Yeah. So when can we go fishing? We could maybe do a podcast on the warts and then- We could break in your filet knife, hopefully.
Yeah, hopefully, but you add a dog to that, it just ends up complicating things. So it's not that we're not dog people. Like we like dogs, we believe in dogs, but we just don't want to have them at this point. Fair enough. That's what it is. We have a dog and we have two. The only reason we have two cats, actually, is because where we live, we heard a meowing under the house and there was two abandoned kittens. So they adopted you?
We had no choice. I mean, I've got two small kids. You can't put a kitten in a house with two small kids and take it away, can you? So Lauren called me up and she said, look, there's these two cats. Can we have one of them? And I gave in and said, yes, because you always do. And then I got back off the ship and there was two cats. So, and obviously, who am I to say no? Yep, there you go. There you go. So in closing here, when are you opening? What day is it today in the podcast
world? Today is Wednesday. Friday. Friday. We're getting a look, as you can see. Place looks nice, right? Yeah, it looks great. It's got a new paint job. Got some pillows. Got some blankets. I mean, it's ready to go. Pretty much. Yeah. It's guest ready. We're going to open Friday. Perfect. For 10 days until... It's Thanksgiving soon. Okay. So, because it could be the last time we get away in a while. We're taking the kids to Great Wolf Lodge.
Oh, cool. We're not taking the dog. He's staying here. Somebody's coming over to check on him. About the cats. No, no, absolutely not. They stay here, too. We've hired a pet sitter. Otherwise, I would have asked you. Now we're friends. Yeah, now that we're friends, now you start asking. You probably would have been cheaper, too. But it's okay. No, I got the kid. We got the perfect, sorry, can't, got the kid.
That's an excuse. Yeah, come on, man. Gotta go with a kid. So, we're going to open for 10 days until the 25th. And then we're going to open Thursday to Monday, every week, 7am, maybe a little bit before, 7am officially, until 2, 2.15ish. Breakfast, lunch, coffees, and then we'll probably do something special for Christmas, maybe some Christmas cookies, if people want to order them, and special treats for Christmas. We'll have a seasonal menu, so things will change.
We actually have a great special, now you've asked what you did. But we're going to have a special from a few days after we open, which is a special turkey Christmas sandwich with homemade cranberry sauce and stuffing and house-roasted turkey. So we'll see how it turns out. Excellent. Homemade bread. We'll try. You know, it's all we could do. Yeah. Hope the community can give us a chance because obviously opening a new business, you don't expect everything to be perfect from day one.
But I think it's one of those things. We could have sat here for another month repainting the wall for the fifth time. But at some point you've really got to open. Yeah. So here we are.
If your coffee's good, then that's the that's the perfect start and we'll be open when we say we'll be here i'll be here come and say hi my little girl janevee she's a bit young to work because she's five obviously but i'm sure she'll spend lots of time here the kids will probably come in for breakfast every day i mean i was i don't blame them i'm gonna see you for your burrito yeah absolutely monday to friday i will be here yeah awesome well
uh it's great to meet you really excited for this thing to open and thanks again yeah it's good podcast world i like it i'll have to listen to your other ones now you don't realize you're a good guy yeah well i have to maybe uh do a recap after a couple months and whatnot well i've lost all my hair i don't know if it's gonna be that stressful right.
Ah it's gonna be fine that's the worst that can happen it should be fine well let's not talk about the worst thing the building got broken into me overnight but hey we were talking about that that's probably the worst that can happen yeah all right thanks again appreciate it cool.