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Cafe Ibis the best place for a quality cup of coffee and a chance to save the planet By
Julie Sulunga The structure sits on the corner of Church Street and Federal Avenue. A passing car can see the figures of young and old sitting outside, whether they be smoking aimlessly or talking about some topic or the gossip of the day. It is a Mecca for coffee drinkers of all kinds with recycling containers to boot. It is the Cafe Ibis. Cafe Ibis is currently undergoing renovations for a whole new cafe that will be full service and more efficient. This new cafe is currently scheduled to open on the first of December. Ibis will no longer have three different counters; the cafe, the deli and the market. Everything will be bought at one counter. Even the coffee will be full-service, and nothing will be self-serve. You will go to one cash register and order what you want from anywhere in the cafe and it will be brought to you. "The Ibis will have new additional space," said Ibis deli manager Rob Sanderson. "It will be a lot easier to work and it will be more efficient, we will be able to serve a lot more people in a quicker time." The renovation is being done to give people a quality atmosphere, trying to make the environment as good as their cup of coffee. There will also be more of a seating area, said co-owner of Sally Sears. The quality cup that you will get at Cafe Ibis is a cup that comes from beans that are mountain grown, shade grown, fair-traded and organically certified. Cafe Ibis has been world renowned for their quality cup of coffee. They have made the transition from a health foods store, back when Randy and Sally first bought the store, to a coffee house that comes close to selling the most certified coffee in the nation with 29 selections, Sears said. The Ibis was first opened in 1976 as a health foods store upstairs from the Needhams'. Randy and Sally were college students who had come to Cache Valley, Randy from the San Francisco area and Sally from the New York area. They gained the opportunity to buy Cafe Ibis, which was Straw Ibis back then, and continued on to keep it a health foods store until it evolved into a gourmet foods store. They then realized that the number-one item selling in the store was fresh roasted beans. This is when Randi got the idea to learn how to roast beans himself. That eventually culminated in the Sears obtaining a warehouse in Emmryville, Calif., that stores a lot of beans for the Ibis; they store very little in Logan. Randy believes that beans grown high in the mountains are better because the higher elevation slows down the roasting process and you receive a better quality than you would if you roasted them at sea level, Sears said. Each roast that is brewed is assigned a quality assurance number. The Ibis will also move their roasting facilities from the room they are in now, which is adjacent to Sally's office, to a warehouse on the west side of town. "We found in doing this that Logan is a community that does not drink coffee; we had to receive our means of support from outside of the community," Sears said. "We do get more and more support [from the community] as the years go on." Cafe Ibis is also part of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, which specializes in ensuring customers of roasters and coffee houses with the most quality cup of coffee. In addition, the Ibis is part of Fair Trade. Fair Trade pays farmers a decent living wage for their harvest, bypasses all exploitive middlemen and provides affordable credit to prevent them from going into debt. It also promotes such practices as organic farming that helps protect the environment. The Ibis is a green business so it has "...business practices that educate the community about environmental ethics and encourage waste reduction and reuse of resources." They don't throw anything away, like the orange peels, or any fruit or vegetable peeling that eventually goes into a compost pile. The flowers that are on the tables even get composted as well as the grounds from making coffee. Even all the coffee cups will soon be recyclable. The employees also have a chance to give back to the community. The Sears give free coffee by the cup, but also give their employees the chance to spend the money they would have spent on coffee on supporting various causes. The proceeds of their "pigs" go to organizations like Coffee Kids, Logan Canyon Coalition, Lisa Shaw and CAPSA. "The pigs are definitely a benefit," Sanderson said. "I get something for free and am able to pass along the good fortune." Cafe Ibis is not a corporate cafe run by people who don't care. The Ibis gives workers the opportunity to meet people in the community and build relationships with really neat people, said Ibis employee Holly Conger. The employees that work at the Ibis are also good friends. "I love my co-workers," Conger said. "We are like family, and Randy and Sally take care of us." The reason the owners of Cafe Ibis are so driven to save the earth and protect the environment is because of the time period they grew up in. "Randy is a Vietnam veteran," Sears said. "We came of age during the sixties and seventies. We were tree huggers. We believed in protecting the planet and providing for the future; the balance of nature is very important to us and Logan Canyon's beauty is what drew us here and kept us here. We are pleased to be here."
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