Origins: Sams and Coffee

November 28, 2019
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Jake Miller was looking for a day job. After 15 years in the restaurant industry, including a decade bartending most days till 3 or 4 a.m., it was time for less night, more light.

Instead of updating his resume, Jake did what Jake does: He created his own day job.

“Basically, I quit my own business to start this business,” he said of Sams and Coffee, the Spokane Valley sandwich and coffee shop located in the Pinecroft Business Park on Mirabeau Parkway.

Jake still owns Crave, a downtown Spokane sports bar, but his daily presence is now focused on a dream he’s held half his life.

As a teenager, he and a friend were already brainstorming possible business concepts after his buddy’s dad told them he would invest in a great entrepreneurial idea. They landed on a coffee shop, but as high school students, there were too many hurdles, so Jake was forced to file the idea away.

“This was before all of the coffee shops opened,” Jake recalled. “Since I was 15, 16 years old, I’ve been trying to figure out how to start a coffee shop.”

A year and a half ago, the dream became reality. Sams and Coffee opened with a focus on breakfast and lunch sandwiches — “sammies” — and coffee.

  • Jake Miller opened Sams and Coffee in 2018.

Jake refers to selections featured on the flavor-packed, fresh-made menu like he’s referring to old friends: the flavor combination he first experienced while backpacking through Europe; his homemade recipe that regularly converts skeptics into tuna fish disciples; the sandwich he discovered during his self-described “bachelor gourmet” days, when he turned whatever happened to be in the fridge and cupboards into a masterpiece fit for guests.

This has given the menu a flair that is atypical of chain sandwich establishments. Sure, you can order turkey, but there’s also options like BBQ brisket, chorizo or fresh avocado sliced in front of you.

A similar approach is taken to coffee selections, where Jake and his baristas experiment with flavors that rotate through the daily specials. A final element of the Sams and Coffee business model is catering. Located as they are in a business district, Jake’s team is adept at supplying spreads of sandwiches — as well as a slew of additional options — for meetings and events.

THE NAME

Jacob Samuel Miller thought about naming the business “Jake’s,” but he’s reserving that name for a future dream (think even more food options and space enough for a 9-hole mini golf course).

For this establishment, “Sams” doubles as his middle name, but there is no apostrophe because it is also a plural form of sandwiches — sammies … sams … get it?

THE VIBE

Whether it’s a sports bar or a coffee shop, Jake emphasizes a clean, consistent and friendly environment. With ample tables, the space revolves around the kitchen, and customers can sit at a bar and watch their breakfast or lunch be prepared from scratch.

“Honestly, if I could have everyone sit up there while they are waiting for their sandwich and get to talk and hear their story … I just want people to feel like they’re part of the community,” Jake said.

  • A long bar overlooking the kitchen allows Jake to chat with customers.

Taking advantage of the daytime environment, Sams and Coffee is blessed with a flood of natural light through huge windows as well as a patio for outdoor seating. When the weather is right, customers can play cornhole outside. Inside, a pinball machine lights up a corner of the room.

THE TOP PICK

The Sun Burst, a Red Bull infusion featuring raspberry, peach and orange juice, has become a best seller.

The daily special is also a common order, typically featuring a specialty drink from the espresso menu with options as varied as the Payday (caramel sauce, salted caramel, peanut butter) and the White Angel (white chocolate, white coffee, vanilla, coconut).

On the sandwich front, the Smashed BBQ and Old Fashioned Tuna both have regular followings.

THE CULT FAVORITE

Big Jake’s Avocado Sam features smoked turkey, avocado, tomato, Caesar dressing and Jake’s special seasoning on honey wheat bread.

“Most people can eat it for lunch and dinner,” Jake joked of the impressive portion offered for $10.50.

THE TIME WHEN …

The first time I (Josh) walked into Sams and Coffee, the person in line in front of me had an epic beard. Jake was taking orders, sporting the trademark beard that also features prominently on the Sams and Coffee logo and signage.

Interviewing him these months later, I confessed feeling a little self-conscious in my close-trimmed goatee. I mean, was having a phenomenal beard game required if I wanted to, say, add an extra shot to my mocha? Could I even order a mocha? I was suddenly feeling more Pollyanna than Paul Bunyan.

Jake laughed. He gets that a lot.

“I tell people it’s not a requirement to have a great beard — a recommendation, but not a requirement.”

The Sams and Coffee branding makes for a great conversation starter as people walk in the door and see the guy on the sign is also the guy at the counter. He likes how it immediately connects people to his identity as a hands-on, local small business owner.

“They say, ‘You’re actually that guy, aren’t you?’” Jake said.

Always the joker, he often likes to play with people: “Nah, the owner just likes to hire guys with beards.”

It’s not a requirement to have a great beard — a recommendation, but not a requirement.

Jake Miller, Sams and Coffee

THE TEAM

A vital part of the success of Sams and Coffee is Jake’s girlfriend, Molly Rainer, a mortgage loan officer who is a steady presence amidst other friends, family members and employees who make the business happen.

Jake credits Cravens Coffee for not only producing a loyal stream of coffee-loving customers but for assisting with his training when he transitioned from bartender to coffee bar-tender.

Not that coffee wasn’t already running through his veins. His father always kept an espresso machine around the house, and he likes to stop by and pull a couple shots in the morning on the way to a work site for his landscaping company. Add in Jake’s mom, who spent nearly four decades as a midwife delivering babies at Deaconess, and the family’s deep community ties add to the support of his business.

THE INFO


12709b E. Mirabeau Parkway #50, Spokane Valley
509-474-0578
www.samsandcoffee.com
@samsandcoffee on Facebook and Instagram

  • Thanks to Sams and Coffee owner Jake Miller for sharing his story with me.
    — Josh Johnson (soccer jersey: Minnesota United)

What would Jake select off his own menu?

Sign up for the free CoffeeJosh newsletter  (delivering a story like this one) and immediately receive our “Owners’ Orders” PDF, featuring coffee and food selections so tempting, they are what local coffee shop owners make for themselves.

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Origins: The Blissful Whisk

November 14, 2019
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File this under the category, “Might Be More Than a Hobby.” The home kitchen mixer Tiffany Cable used to make treats for family and friends measured 5 feet tall and nearly 1,000 pounds. Vaguely resembling a cross between a Star Wars robot and an offensive lineman, the Hobart 60-quart model is known in highbrow baking circles as a “planetary floor mixer” – because, you know, just try setting that bad boy up on the counter.

Today, the mixer is no longer encroaching on Tiffany’s dining room but resides in a more natural habitat: The Blissful Whisk, a 3,500-square-foot bakery that opened in May.

Tiffany Cable opened The Blissful Whisk in May 2019

Hindsight may have seen this day coming. Like an adrenaline-junky staring down a mountain cliff, Tiffany has always sought excuses for her next big baking rush. During the years she helped run the family’s technology company, she brought in treats for the entire staff once a week. (“We found, after a while, that no one would take Fridays off,” she laughed.) When her two daughters invited their friends over, she would host baking challenges. (“Best chocolate chip cookie wins, and take home all the leftovers.”) When the kids moved on to college, she regularly mailed delectable care packages to them. (And to several of their friends located all over the country.)

Baking is what Tiffany Cable loved to do. And so she spent a fortune doing it.

“Mom,” daughter Haley essentially told her, intervention style. “You’re crazy. Start a business.”

Haley Cable even drafted a business plan revolving around a care package subscription service. Coming as it did around the same time as a divorce and the sale of the family business, this “imaginary business plan” struck a chord.

So she enrolled in the Inland Northwest Culinary Academy’s baking program at Spokane Community College and began dreaming about — in the vernacular of her shop – taking a whisk.

A few months into her Blissful Whisk journey, “it has gone way better than I ever expected that it could,” Tiffany said, citing a supportive community, excellent staff, and local, fresh ingredients.

“I don’t buy frozen things,” Tiffany said. “I bake from scratch — everything, every day.”

A certain well-used, half-ton appliance can vouch for that.

  • Lead Barista Tasha Branning
  • A spacious room that includes the teaching kitchen can be closed off for classes or events

THE NAME

Tiffany Cable was walking down the street in Astoria, Ore., on a celebration vacation — she had just graduated from culinary school and signed the lease for her bakery — when she noticed a giant whisk in the window of a reclaimed furniture store. Inquiring within, she learned it was from an 80-quart, 1920s-era Hobart mixer used by a local bakery that opened in Astoria in 1902. It was freshly donated to the furniture store by the wife of the third generation baker-owner. He had recently passed away.

“I’m hoping he followed me to the bakery, and I have a baker looking over my shoulder making sure I’m not screwing up, because he did this so long and was really loved in that community,” Tiffany said.

The whisk that inspired the name of Tiffany Cable’s bakery

The Blissful Whisk was born, and that whisk is now part of the decor. In fact, so much of the identity of the business revolves around the “whisk” theme, that one has to wonder what might have been if not for that fateful stroll through Astoria. Tiffany’s name for her new bakery before that day? “The Cracked Mug.”

THE VIBE

This bakery is whisk-y business, from the decorative wallpaper to the whisk-shaped light fixtures over each table. (Fun fact: These “lights” are actual whisk attachments to a 20-quart Hobart mixer.) The owner’s personal touches are everywhere, from the “Tiffany” blue color scheme to the teapots (her drink of choice) that line the walls. The bakery includes ample seating, particularly when you factor in the adjoining teaching kitchen that can be closed off for meetings or classes.

THE TOP PICK

Lead Barista Tasha Branning and Manager Gena Ceresero both recommend an Iced Americano (Tasha adds chocolate powder and caramel sauce; Gena keeps it simple with heavy whipping cream). On the bakery side, the Huckleberry Blueberry White Chocolate Chip Scone has been the best-seller from day one.

THE CULT FAVORITE

The Bacon Jalapeno Pepperjack Scone, which has been known to be purchased as a joke only to turn into an obsession.

The Bacon Jalapeno Pepperjack Scone

THE TIME WHEN …

A local TV station scheduled a story on The Blissful Whisk shortly after it opened, and so Tiffany went above and beyond to make sure the case was filled with eye-catching, delectable treats. But when the camera crew arrived, they honed in on a patio customer who bought a from-scratch, Blissful Whisk dog biscuit for her canine companion.

“They literally did not film any of the case of stuff I worked so hard to make; the only thing they talked about was the dog biscuits,” Tiffany said. “We got a ton of business from it, but literally I spend hours every morning making everything in that case, and they focused on the dog biscuits.”

She joked to being “only a little bit insulted,” especially since something she initially thought to be a fair-weather business has expanded instead.

People will literally pay more for a dog biscuit than they will for a pastry.

Tiffany Cable, The Blissful Whisk

“We do dog cakes now,” Tiffany said. “It’s all natural. It has carrots and apples and peanut butter in it, and then we split it and put banana in the center and frost it with mashed potatoes, dyed with huckleberries so it’s purple. Then we decorate with dog bones on top, and you have a dog birthday cake.”

Though a dog lover herself, Tiffany admits surprise at the extent people pamper their pooches.

“I think it’s hilarious, honestly, that people will literally pay more for a dog biscuit than they will for a pastry,” she said. “They will complain about the price of the pastry, but they will pay anything for a dog biscuit.”

THE TEAM

The Blissful Whisk employs 13 staff members. Spokane’s Ionic Coffee roasts a special “Blissful Blend.” Other local partners include Mandala Chai, the Kitchen Engine (loose tea), Twenty Seventh Heaven (loaf bread) and Spokandy (truffles), among others.

  • Ionic Coffee’s ‘Blissful Blend’

THE INFO

1612 N. Barker Road, Spokane Valley
509-242-3189
@theblissfulwhiskspokane on Facebook and Instagram

  • Thanks to Blissful Whisk owner Tiffany Cable for sharing her story with me.
    — Josh Johnson (soccer jersey: Orlando City SC)

What would Tiffany select off her own menu?

Sign up for the free CoffeeJosh newsletter  (delivering stories like this one) and immediately receive our “Owners’ Orders” PDF, featuring coffee and food selections so tempting, they are what local coffee shop owners make for themselves.

Origins: West Plains Roasters

December 26, 2019
3

It’s the end of a decade, and if 2020 Andy LaBolle could travel back and have a chat with his younger self, he would start by having 2010 Andy sit down and put on a seat belt.

“I would say, ‘Hold on, it’s nothing like you think it’s going to be,’” Andy said.

In November, Andy opened West Plains Roasters in downtown Cheney, a specialty coffee shop selling his own coffee to a community he deeply loves. That wasn’t the plan, but not much of what transpired this past decade went according to script.

“(Ten years ago), I thought I was going to live with family for the rest of my life and probably work at Starbucks,” he said. “A pretty boring life, but it was easy, it was comfortable, it paid my bills, it was safe.”

Andy pauses here to smile, and perhaps to take a breath before launching into his favorite run-on sentence: “And then I met a crazy woman who is all about adventure and changed everything and won’t ever let me be comfortable or be satisfied and always pushes me.”

Not all of the amazing adventures, risks and rewards of the past decade involved his now-wife, Hannah, though most of them do. Before they were married in 2013, Andy lost more than 100 pounds (down from a high of 330), and he was crushing it at his job at Starbucks. Not only did he wear the distinguished black apron (for baristas who have passed Starbucks’ Coffee Masters program), but he could move coffee product like no one else. He even has a plaque from the day he was working at the Liberty Lake Starbucks and led the nation in coffee sales.

After knowing each other as friends for a short time, Andy and Hannah took their first date hiking the Liberty Lake Loop in 2012 — and decided to get married by the end of the day.

Hannah was moving to Africa to work with missionary friends in Kenya, and Andy decided he wanted to not just marry this woman, but embark on a world of adventure together.

Their time in Kenya was cut short for several reasons, not the least of which being they learned on short notice that visas weren’t being renewed following a terrorist strike in that country. They spent a week in Cairo before deciding to return to the States.

That would be enough adventure to fill a lifetime for some people, but that leaves out Andy’s stint running a screamo metal concert venue in Otis Orchards called The Kave, “which was so rad … and random,” he recalled. That doesn’t mention the trip to Haiti or the restaurant jobs where he became so indispensable, in one case a Coeur d’Alene manager offered to pay for his gas from Cheney if Andy would, pretty please, reconsider his decision to resign. This also leaves out the time right after he was married when he was hit by a car while riding his bicycle, and regulars at the Liberty Lake Starbucks pooled together to buy him a road bike worth more than $1,000.

2010 Andy was anxious and risk averse. 2020 Andy would tell you that he is still anxious, but he has learned to be regret averse.

“Regret sucks,” he said. “That’s part of why we’re opening a coffee shop and why my wife’s a photographer and why we went to Cairo and why we went to Kenya and why we do the things we do.”

So, guess what, 2010 Andy: In November 2019, you open West Plains Roasters just down the street from the Eastern Washington University campus with a dream to share excellence with a community you didn’t know much about in 2010 — and can’t imagine life without in 2020.

  • Andy LaBolle at work …
  • … at his new shop in downtown Cheney.

THE NAME

For Andy, the location and name of his shop is not the result of market research and focus groups. The West Plains is home. His wife, Hannah, has roots in Cheney, and the couple is helping plant a church in the community.

“We care about this area, and we are going to stamp this area on our name because we believe the West Plains is a value,” Andy said. “This is where we want to be and where we want to pour into. We are proud of it, and we hope to be a standard of excellence in the West Plains.”

Andy quickly dismisses any worry that a name like West Plains Roasters puts geographic handcuffs on the future growth of his business. Admitting he doesn’t “have a clue if it will ever happen,” he said he has considered future locations in Airway Heights and Medical Lake.

“And just, that’s it: Three shops, three areas within the West Plains,” he said.

THE VIBE

The idea of a specialty coffee shop is new to Cheney, but Andy doesn’t use that as an excuse to downgrade the experience in any way.

He purchased top-of-the-line equipment across the board and designed the space in a way to appeal to families and students alike. The color scheme is whites and grays — “our only major pop of color is the plants” — and the high ceilings and open layout make the shop feel even larger than it is.

“Bright, vibrant, modern — the goal is to create a space that invites and is culturally appropriate for the dynamics of people coming to a specialty coffee shop,” Andy said. “Everything is really thoughtful and intentional, just like the coffee.”

  • West Plains Roasters’ open, bright and clean environment

THE TOP PICK

People are loving both the toast — and the toasted. The Toasted Cinnamon Latte is the best seller off the drink menu; it’s star quality is the house-made toasted cinnamon syrup.

On the eats side of the menu, the selection of five toasts may cause one to hold up the line while weighing the finer points of each craving. When in doubt …

“Our avocado toast is insane,” Andy said.

According to the menu, it features “our signature avocado mash topped with thinly sliced cured chorizo, pickled red onion, Cotija cheese and cilantro.”  

THE CULT FAVORITE

Currently listed as a “seasonal drink” on the menu, the Citrus Maple Latte features dark amber maple syrup with a hint of citrus bitters. On my visit with Andy, I ordered this with oat milk, and, Mom, I think I’ve joined the cult.

Divine.

THE TEAM

Andy employs a team of three at his downtown Cheney shop, and he counts Chai Leo (a Cheney-based chai company) and Coeur d’Alene’s MAK Bread as two of his favorite local partners.

THE TIME WHEN …

Both Andy and Hannah are curious hobbyists who excel as they follow their passions. Hannah is a professional photographer who stays busy enough that she is turning people away, but she started years ago by picking up a camera and teaching herself how to use it.

  • Hannah LaBolle’s photos are often featured on West Plains Roasters’ social media outlets

Andy dabbled for a while selling beard oil — “the Espresso Vanilla Beard Oil I sold smelled like a vanilla latte,” he said — but mostly kept it as a side hobby dealing with friends and family.

“Whatever takes less risk, I will do that,” he said. “Any hobby, I’m in. The minute you want me to make it a business and put on risk, I’m out.”

So when Andy decided he wanted to buy a coffee roaster, he was initially thinking of it as a fun side gig he could share with his group of friends. It was Hannah who believed in something deeper and bigger, breathing life into the dream that now has a storefront in downtown Cheney.

“She said, ‘I will support you in this if you will make it a business because you deserve to make it a business, you are capable of making it a business and you will succeed,’” Andy recalled. “And I was like, but it’s so risky. I’m just thinking of all the things that can go wrong.”

In the end, Andy said Hannah’s own success paving the way with her photography business coupled with her encouragement helped him overcome his doubts.

Most of all, Andy credited the continued work of God in his life. It was God who helped him pursue a better story with his life back in 2010, God who “pioneered this whole venture” with West Plains Roasters, and God who put a certain woman in his life to provide support, encouragement and the occasional nudge.

“I may be scared, but I’m enamored by courageous people,” Andy said. “I’m not a go-change-the-world-and-live-in-other-countries-and-who-cares-if-I-die person. That’s not how I operate. But (Hannah) is reckless in a loving and kind way, reckless in her commitment to doing what is right.”

THE INFO


108 College Ave., Cheney
westplainsroasters.com
@westplainsroasters on Facebook and Instagram

  • Years ago, I met 2010 Andy, and it’s been so inspiring to watch this guy’s story unfold. Thanks for sharing the latest chapter, my friend.
    — Josh Johnson (soccer jersey: Uganda National Team)

While you’re here, would you do me a favor?

If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)

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