The first time I walked in the door of the Third Street Deli in Pepin, Wisconsin, Judith, the owner/chef, looked up from the grill and said “Ooh, a handsome stranger just walked in.” I was a little hung over—honestly, I was very hung over from a late night exploring the downtown bars in La Crosse—and wasn’t immediately grateful for being the center of attention.
Whole Earth Breakfast
I found a seat at the counter and ordered the “Whole Earth Breakfast”; I felt like I needed the entire planet’s resources to take the edge off my hangover. Judith started grilling the vegetables, then slipped out to her garden, a small plot just outside the front door, and plucked a tomato off a vine that she chopped up and added to my breakfast. The whole time she cooked, she chatted me up, throwing in the occasional “handsome stranger” for seasoning. You’ll never have an experience like that at Applebee’s or McDonald’s. And, yes, that breakfast was delicious, and I left feeling better.
Judith had an agenda with her restaurant, and she never pretended otherwise: she wanted to show that food can taste good and be healthy. Radical! She succeeded by using fresh ingredients, much of which she bought from local producers, and by putting it all together with cooking techniques honed through years of experience.
Judith is closing the Third Street Deli in a couple of weeks. Seems she got tired of working long hours for little money and with the hassles that can sometimes drain the will from the most determined of small business owners. Go figure. When you own a small business, you have a lot working against you, like limited resources to hire help and a regulatory structure built for large companies that often crushes small ones.
There were other challenges, too. Along Judith’s section of the Mississippi River, the peak tourist season is typically 4 months long. There’s no way that a small restaurant will survive year-round on income from one-third of the year, regardless of how good those 4 months are. To make it, those places need to build a strong local following, something that can be difficult when the population base is small to begin with and, frankly, when many of the local residents won’t rush to support a new venture by someone they don’t know, especially if it’s a little different from what they’re used to.
In the past year or so, we lost two other small restaurants along the Mississippi that were both favorites of mine, the Red Lion Pub in Victory (Wisconsin) and Espresso, Cigars, and More in Clinton (Iowa). They faced many of the same challenges as the Third Street Deli and ultimately gave up for similar reasons. I’ll miss the chance to indulge in my favorite dishes—great fish and chips, a Cubano sandwich, or those amazing pork tacos Judith cooked for me last week—but their respective communities are really the ones who have lost.
Small businesses are the backbone of our communities. It’s not ADM or Bank of America or the Holiday Inn. Those are big businesses out to make as much money as possible, and they are only interested in a community as long as their presence is profitable. Small business owners, though, are deeply embedded in their communities in ways a chain operation never can be, regardless of how many local people they hire.
Another dish you won’t be able to get anymore
Many small business owners hang in there through tough times, because they are passionate about what they do and because they want to be part of something other than a profit factory for out of town interests. Most do no better than make a decent living, but they share an intimacy with their customers that you’ll never get from a large corporation. Vibrant communities have a healthy range of small businesses. Communities on the decline are dominated by chain stores and large corporations.
So thank you, Judith, for all your hard work over the years, for bringing good food, community, and joy to Pepin and beyond, and for that tomato in my breakfast a couple of years ago. Good luck as you move on to new ventures and new challenges. You will be missed.
Sincerely,
Handsome Stranger
© Dean Klinkenberg, 2013
**Pepin is covered in Small Town Pleasures and Road Tripping Along the Great River Road, Vol. 1. Click the links above for more. Disclosure: This website may be compensated for linking to other sites or for sales of products we link to.
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