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Labor of love creates charming small town dining spot in Arapahoe
Question: How is the Take 5 Coffee House and Restaurant in Arapahoe, Nebraska like Ben & Jerry’s famous homemade ice cream business in Vermont?
Answer: Take 5, like Ben & Jerry’s, invents its own ice cream recipes.
And although ice cream brings a lot of people into this charming restored drive-in, a lot of other factors bring them back.
On a recent Saturday, Take 5 was selling peach soft-serve ice cream, made from peaches home grown in Arapahoe. The soft serve flavor changes every four days, but customer favorites are root beer, lemon, peanut butter and banana as well as peach. The flavor of the week is printed on a chalk board outside of the restaurant.
Take 5 owners, Becky Crawford and Chris Urbom, recognized the need for a coffee house and restaurant in their town, and an empty building right on the main drag through town, although in serious disrepair, seemed ideal — visible from the highway yet within walking distance of the Arapahoe business district.
A restoration project
Becky and Chris’ first order of business was restoring the derelict Sno-Cone Drive-In, a process that required months of hard labor on nights and weekends.
“It was a lot of work but the effort was worth it,” Crawford said, “because we uncovered wood plank floors, original plaster walls and charming old wooden doors among other finds.”
When not working on the drive-in, the two friends researched the coffee house business by visiting 30 different coffee houses where they tasted coffee and learned about the business. After tasting a lot of coffees, they settled on a Denver company to roast their coffee and deliver it fresh weekly. The taste of Take 5 coffee soars beyond most customers’ expectations.
A tasty menu
Like the coffee, sandwiches, including a selection of low-fat sandwiches, are hand made and fresh.
“We rotate sandwiches by the season or just to try something new,” says Crawford. The Black Forest sandwich combines fresh turkey slices with bacon and cheddar cheese, and is served warm with honey mustard, tomato and lettuce. The Take 5 chicken sandwich is a tasty combination of chicken, grapes, apple, celery, pineapple and nuts served on a croissant. The menu also features a barbecue beef sandwich, smothered beef burrito, hamburgers, and salads in many mouth-watering combinations.
“Our soups are made from scratch and my 85 year old mother-in-law makes the noodles for the chicken noodle soup,” Crawford said. “Chili, chicken noodle, ham and bean, and potato are constants, and we also rotate others, like minestrone, vegetable beef or Wisconsin cheese.”
Customers often drive an hour one way for a Take 5 ice cream treat.
“In the summer, we feature a different ice cream treat each day, and this winter we will feature a flavored latte each week,” said Crawford. “Flavored latte’s are a combination of syrup flavors with fun names like Seventh Heaven, Nutty Blonde, or Full Moon.”
Lessons Learned
Crawford says there are a few things she and her partner have learned about business from the experience of opening Take 5.
- Remodeling requires a lot more work than building new
- Pricing is hard because costs may be hidden
- Signage is really important
Take 5 advertises on the local television cable station and in newspapers in Beaver City, Cambridge, and Elwood, Crawford said.
“We also sponsor a barbecue several times during the summer and fall. We invite a caterer to barbecue ribs at the restaurant and advertise the event to our customers, inviting them to come to Take 5 for ribs and stay for an ice cream.”
“We know our customers, and we talk with them about what happens in their life and in our lives,” says Crawford. “We set-up big tables in the restaurant so that people who normally never sit and talk will sit at the same table and get to know one another.”
For Becky and Chris, Take 5 is clearly a labor of love. But it’s that kind of love that makes small towns what they are.
Who To Contact...
Take 5 Coffee House and Restaurant
Becky Crawford and Chris Urbom, Owners
Arapahoe, NE
308.962-5496
Email: bcrawford@crawfordrepair.com
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