BROKEN BOW, NE – Those traveling down Highway 2 on the West side of Broken Bow recently may have noticed the lights back on at the former Taco John’s building attached to the Trotter’s gas station. Rather than carrying away tacos and burritos, customers are now picking up everything from coffee and smoothies to avocado toast and breakfast burritos.
Howdy Coffee Co., owned by Barry Fox, Stuart Fox, and Cody Schmick, opened its doors just over a couple weeks ago with a soft opening. The product customers experienced was several years in the making.
Barry and Cody told KCNI/KBBN News that over the past three to four years they had considered franchises, but always struggled to decide if there would be enough business and traffic. They added it always seemed like the timing wasn’t right or they didn’t have the right location.
“We kicked it around for a long time. We kind of put it on the back shelf, and then, you know, when McDonald’s made the decision to pull out we went ‘Well, maybe if we did something more with the food we could make something work,” said Fox.
Movement started with conveyed interest in helping with the coffee side from staff of their other franchise, Kinkaider Brewing Company, and the help of the Trotter family that owns the building.
The idea for the brand itself just seemed to make sense out of a group of ideas, Schmick said.
“This Howdy brand was something that was just easily consumable to people, whether you’re from Broken Bow, Custer County.. like, a ton of our staff that grew up in Lincoln and Omaha just loved the idea of the brand. It’s just simple, it’s fun, it’s very approachable and it’s like, gosh, if a coffee shop can’t be simple, fun, and approachable to most people then what are we doing here? We came up with that, it seemed like, I would say, in our initial meetings rolling out ‘Hey, here’s five ideas of directions we can go’ it was pretty clear early on that this was the direction everybody wanted to go.”
He added that there are similarities between their past business ventures and Howdy Coffee, even though the differences are obvious.
“At the end of the day we’re putting liquid into a cup and selling it, you know? People feel very passionately about local beer, local spirits, but they also feel passionate about their coffee… So we ultimately just decided we enjoy growing brands, we enjoy growing concepts, and Barry and I work really well together in order to do that and incorporating Stuart’s expertise in and he’s going to see things a little bit differently than either of us see them. But ultimately we were just like let’s try to grow another brand.”
Fox and Schmick said the building formerly being a business with a kitchen and dining area gave them an obvious advantage in transforming it before opening day. The menu even features the “Howdy Oh-Lays”, a salute to the building’s former days.
Other food items on the menu include kolaches, breakfast burritos and sandwiches, frittatas, avocado toast, a yogurt parfait, and cronuts (a pastry tossed in cinnamon sugar drizzled in cream cheese frosting). A goal is for as many items to be made in house as possible, including dough.
In addition to a classic black coffee, the drink menu features more than twelve classic coffee shop options as well as original Howdy Coffee creations.
The two agreed that their mission is to provide a higher quality food item while also considering the customer’s time.
“Ultimately we want to put the highest quality product we can out that window in three minutes or less, right? There’s some challenges there.. we have to think about prep differently, we have to think about how we’re setting it up.. the least amount of steps that we can put the crew through back there to get that stuff out the window in a high quality manner,” said Schmick.
Howdy Coffee Co. is open 6 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday and 7 am to 4 pm Saturday and Sunday.
