Adding perks to a Rose

OTHELLO — Desert Rose Designs owner Melody Anguiano said she wants the new Desert Rose Cafe to be the kind of place where people can take their time.

She had customers who already spent time browsing the Desert Rose boutique - and besides, she likes a cup of coffee and a conversation with friends, she said.

“My dream was just to see people relaxing and meeting here,” Anguiano said.

The new cafe, 745 E. Hemlock St., is open from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. It’s inside the building that has housed Desert Rose Designs for more than a decade.

Desert Rose was a floral and gift shop when Anguiano bought it in 2015, and she expanded the gift line and added clothing and accessories to the boutique. Adding a coffee bar seemed like a natural next step.

“I wanted the opportunity to invest in the building, and expand,” she said. “It was like, okay, coffee (and) flowers - obvious. Shopping while you’re drinking your coffee.”

Originally she only planned a coffee bar.

“‘Cafe’ means coffee,” she said. “So I wanted to add the coffee and pastries.”

Once the word got out the coffee stand was coming, however, the plans changed a little bit.

“We’d get customers who’d automatically (ask), ‘What are you serving for lunch?’ And that was constant. So we decided to take it a step further and do the sandwiches and soups and salads,” she said.

As befits a floral shop, there are specialty coffees with floral syrups added, and customers have the option of adding a blossom to their drinks. The Desert Rose signature latte comes with edible rose petals, Anguiano said. The menu also includes tea, cocoa, sodas, lemonade made in-house, sugar-free options and dairy-free milks.

The cookies, cupcakes, cookie bars and savories in the display case come from the Cow Path Bakery a few blocks away. The cafe serves coffee produced by Rockabilly Roasting Co., Kennewick. The coffee roasted by Conversatio Coffee Roasters out of Othello is used for the drip, she said.

Once the cafe had evolved into a place to eat lunch, Anguiano decided to add breakfast too. The menu features breakfast sandwiches and waffle bites; sandwiches for lunch, chef’s salad and a couple choices of soup. The Venezuelan cachito is served all day.

“(It is) a crescent pastry stuffed with ham and mozzarella cheese, with honey butter on top,” Anguiano said. “So far this is a very big hit.”

She credited her cafe manager, Katie Villareal, with helping make the process of opening a cafe much easier than it might have been otherwise. There’s a list of regulatory requirements that come with the food and drink business that isn’t there for a flower shop and boutique. In addition, running a kitchen producing food and drink for sale is way different than making sandwiches at home, she said.

“I found a manager first,” Anguiano said. “She has a passion for the food industry, so she put most of the menu items together - we work together on it. We let the baristas come up with fun names for the signature drinks.”

Hiring the manager turned out to be a good decision, she said.

“It’s way more complex than I ever would’ve imagined,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like pulling my hair out now. Who knows how it would’ve been without a manager?”

The cafe seats about 20 people and reflects Anguiano’s preference for natural materials. Table tops are hammered copper or wood - that long wood table top is a century old - and the floor is polished concrete.

“Textures of stone and wood and concrete,” she said. “Natural elements. I tried to stay very true to what I love and what makes me feel good.”

Some services are still in the works. Anguiano said she wants to add the option to order online and provide curbside pickup. Anguiano and her husband Jorge purchased the building before opening the cafe, so there are additional changes coming, she said.

“When you start from scratch you can make it yours,” she said. “The plan is to eventually remodel the (flower shop) side.”

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.