Coffee shop manager came to Williston for love, not oil

WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) - She didn’t come here for the oil boom, but she wasn’t supposed to be a coffee shop manager, either.

Love brought Louise Skaare to the Bakken, and it has set her on an entirely unexpected, but excellent, adventure.

Skaare met her husband Joey as a freshman at Temple University through a mutual friend. She was 19 and still living in Pennsylvania, which was the only home she’d ever known, or thought she’d ever know.

Coming out here was a big move. She decided she’d likely be able to find a job as a history teacher, but there weren’t any positions available.

That was OK, she decided, because she’d been thinking about switching careers. She was becoming interested in business, so she interviewed for a position as an officer manager with Basin Safety, which provides safety training for a range of businesses, including many in the oil industry.

The interviewer, not unexpectedly, asked why a recent graduate with a secondary education degree wanted to suddenly make the switch to business.

“I brought up my brothers’ company - they roast coffee, and so I kind of grew up around coffee and their coffee shop.”

Next thing she knew, the interview had taken a surreal turn. Her interviewer was asking, in all seriousness, if she wanted to start a coffee shop of her own.

“That is just crazy,” she said.

And that is when the interview suddenly flipped. Interviewee became interviewer.

“So he just gets up and shows me this space,” Louise Skaare says, waving her hand at the small, but now charming area in which the Lantern Coffee Company resides at 4401 16th Ave. W.

“It used to be an old work kitchen with glass doors. It had a microwave and a fridge, but no running water,” she recalled.

It would take some work, but Louise could see it as a coffee shop. It would be small, but charming, but with lots of room to grow. It could be a dream come true.

She decided to take the leap.

She said yes.

Louise Skaare’s husband is from Williston, originally, and grew up on a farm in Alamo.

“We met when I was 19 in Philly,” Skaare told the Williston Herald (https://bit.ly/1E3uCFA ). “I never thought I’d leave there. My family is there, my friends are there.”

Joey Skaare was visiting a mutual friend, Ashley Olyoe, also of Williston. She got into her head that these two would be perfect for each other.

She was right, but Louise was pretty skeptical of this claim at the time.

“He’s from the country, I’m from the city,” she said. “That’s a whole different view of life. He was a farmer, and still is.”

In the initial meeting, Joey thought Louise was pretty cute - but Louise could only see their differences.

They parted ways. She to a two-week mission trip to Peru and he to classes at North Dakota State College in Wahpeton.

But they had exchanged phone numbers. And they communicated. Sporadically at first.

Olyoe kept at her matchmaking, however, and Louise was eventually convinced to travel to North Dakota to stay with Olyoe for a month, to see what might transpire.

Joey took Louise to his family’s nearly century-old farm in Alamo for their first date. After that month, there was a bit of back and forth, but the romance had begun to take off.

“I’d come out on my breaks,” Louise recalled. “We’d go to Colorado because my sister lived there and he had a condo there. It felt like something was growing, but there was so much distance between us, so it was scary.”

On her last trip out, Louise felt a peace unlike any she’d felt elsewhere.

“Back home, it just felt like I was missing something,” she said. “So that’s when I decided I was leaving for North Dakota.”

She transferred to Minot State University in the fall of 2012 to finish her degree in secondary education.

She and Joey were married the following April.

Louise will admit, with a laugh, that coffee was not her first love. It took time for that love to blossom.

“I liked tea,” she said. “When my brothers said they were going to start a business just selling coffee, I was like you can’t do that, you have to sell pastries or something, too.”

Her brothers didn’t listen to that advice, but their roasting business has worked out well in spite of that. Louise, meanwhile, has become intrigued by all things coffee, and is finding the whole concept of a neighborhood coffee shop exciting. She cannot wait to see what will transpire in this new adventure in life.

Unlike her brothers, however, she is selling a few food items on the side. On a recent visit to the store, there were, for example, chocolate biscotti with coffee beans in them, orange biscotti and a vegan muffin made without dairy products.

She believes her husband has been intrigued by the roasting aspect of coffee.

“I think he’s playing with the idea of becoming a roaster himself,” Louise said, “and he’s already said he’d work here on Saturday.”

Her brothers, the Greenstreet Roasters, will be supplying the store with specialty coffees. They’ve recently returned from a trip to Brazil to check out coffee farms there and acquire new beans.

“I can’t wait to see what new beans we will be able to get,” Louise said.

She’s also hoping there will be chances to tour a few of the farms herself.

In the meantime, Louise has a whole slate of community activities planned, including a few cupping parties to educate people on the finer points of coffee taste.

Cupping, she explained, is a little like wine tasting. There’s an art to it, one that helps elevate the whole coffee experience.

“The cupping is all part of educating people about coffee,” she said. “When people come in, we want to talk coffee with them. We want them to experience the different flavor notes, and if there is something they don’t like, we’ll give them something else. Coffee is $4 to $5, so you have to enjoy it. You have to be treating yourself.”

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Information from: Williston Herald, https://www.willistonherald.com