Coffee in Quiltropolis
I don’t hate Starbucks, but I’m glad there is no Starbucks in Winterset.
Instead, we have Petite Café, a small (petite!) coffee shop owned and operated by Naomi Hupton.
“Petite,” as we locals call Naomi’s tiny storefront, offers quality, hand-crafted hot and cold coffee drinks and scrumptious breakfast, lunch, and sweet-tooth options from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Saturday. On the rotating menu are mouth-watering breakfast burritos, sweet and savory scones, veggie wraps, nutritious grab-and-go salads, and my favorite high-calorie treat, Naomi’s Fudgy Oat Bars.
I remember the joy in Naomi’s’s voice last summer when she told me Midwest Living magazine was coming to Winterset to do a feature and wanted to include her business. Sure enough, the editorial and camera crew blew in, marveled at her delicious cinnamon buns, took a zillion pictures, and pouf, were gone!
As a former magazine owner (Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting) and frequent photo stylist, I know that whether it’s quilts or storefronts, if you want the images in your publication to have a Christmas or a winter feel, you have to do the photography a full year in advance, which means Naomi had to wait many months for the results of Midwest Living’s visit. That’s her hand in the photo below, holding the magazine open to what we call “Naomi’s page” in the current issue. Sweet!
Another adorable (temporary) coffee option showed up last Saturday during the Iowa Quilt Museum’s Airing of the Quilts. I was on my way to my first volunteer shift, on the south portico of the Madison County Courthouse, when I spied the mobile kiosk. (See the quilt hanging under the portico in the background?)
Operating The Bean were local gals Sarah and Jessica. (Sarah was in school with one of my kids, and Jessica’s mom and I take the same yoga class.) The two young women drive their mobile coffee stand to various Central Iowa venues on weekends as a fun break from their regular jobs—Sarah’s with Hospice and Jessica’s at the courthouse.
During our chat, the young women told me Naomi Hupton’s husband Matt, head roaster at the Huptons’ other business, Pammel Park Coffee, generously provided guidance when they were acquiring their equipment. How kind!
Pammel Park Coffee is a top-notch coffee roastery located on the Huptons’ farm in Lincoln Township, out near Pammel State Park. Matt and his family moved from Minneapolis back to Matt’s roots in Madison County a few years ago, bringing Matt’s twenty-five years in the coffee industry along with them. Among the Des Moines Metro Area locations that carry Pammel Park blends are Chain & Spoke, Eatery A, and Motley School Tavern, among others, and you can buy beans at Petite or on the Pammel Park website.
Of course, there are other places in Winterset you can get “coffee.” (No offense meant to the convenience stores, lunch counters, and fast food joints.)
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