The Pantry Cafe is located at 238 E. State Street in Mossyrock.
Amy Cooper-Cravens talks about the menu at The Pantry Thursday afternoon in Mossyrock.
The Pantry Cafe menu is hung on the outside of the building at 238 E. State Street in Mossyrock.
Employee Ashley Ward and Owner Amy Cooper-Cravens pose for a photo at The Pantry Thursday afternoon in Mossyrock.
Editor’s Note: The Chronicle is working to assist local businesses suffering from the effects of the COVID-19 virus spread and associated government orders to close or limit commerce. There will be a feature on a local business in each edition of The Chronicle and at chronline.com moving forward. To be considered, email reporter Eric Trent at etrent@chronline.com. Additionally, The Chronicle will continue to offer its coverage of the coronavirus and its effects across the community, state and nation free outside of our paywall at chronline.com.
MOSSYROCK — Amy Cooper-Cravens was on a mission four years ago.
She was looking to open some type of deli and bake shop with a friend. The plan fell through, the friends went their separate ways and Cooper-Cravens kept pursuing her goal. While searching for kitchen equipment, she noticed a cafe for sale in Mossyrock on East State Street. She asked the owner if they had any equipment for sale and the owner said no, they wanted to sell the business as a whole.
Thirty-minutes later the cafe owner asked Cooper-Cravens if she would meet her for lunch. They met and the cafe owner offered Cooper-Cravens a job with the intent to buy the cafe. Cooper-Cravens slept on the decision for a night, came back the next morning and made a deal.
“It was kind of a wild and crazy choice, but here I am today,” Cooper-Cravens said.
Cooper-Cravens took over the business after 10 months of working as an employee and learning the ins and outs of the cafe.
Three and a half years in and Cooper-Cravens works mostly alone at the cafe. Her average amount of help is one part-time employee. She floats the winter by herself and had been running the restaurant almost exclusively alone for the past four months, from mid-March when COVID-19 hit until she was finally able to hire an employee on June 17.
“I’m pretty much a one-man show all the time,” Cooper-Cravens said. “Now that the business is paid for and I’ve got someone here, I’m hoping to afford more payroll and get more help and have a little more freedom.”
As a result, Thee Pantry Cafe is currently open four days a week: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wednesday through Friday, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. The breakfast, lunch and pizza joint is currently offering to-go orders only. Cooper-Cravens plans to open the dining room on July 7 and the cafe will be closed July 1-6 to prepare for that.
Working alone was made even more difficult due to the size of Thee Pantry Cafe’s menu, which offers extensive breakfast and lunch options, from breakfast burritos and biscuits and gravy, to a variety of burgers and sandwiches.
Breakfast is served all-day, pizza is either take-and-bake or the cafe can cook it for the customer. There are 15 specialty sandwiches, from BLTs to French dip, ranging from $7.99 to $12.99. The cafe offers 13 varieties of burgers and an enormous breakfast menu.
“It’s hard to do the dishes, the waiting, the cashier and the cooking while still providing accurate customer service,” Cooper-Cravens said. “But we have really good regulars and we live in an area where there’s a lot of camping, so that’s good for us in the summertime.”
Most of the big summer festivals in and near Mossyrock have been canceled due to COVID-19, such as the Mossyrock Blueberry Festival, which draws thousands of visitors. Now she’s hoping the annual wave of campers make their way to the nearby camping opportunities.
Thee Pantry Cafe is advantageously situated on East State Street, the main drag that turns into Mossyrock Road and leads to popular camping spots such as Mossyrock Park and Riffe Lake Campground. The cafe is the final restaurant potential campers see as they head to those campgrounds and the first one they see when they return to town to stock up on supplies.
“All of our busy weekends have been closed for the summer, but hopefully the campers will still come in and get their breakfast,” Cooper-Cravens said. “We have some people we only see in the summertime. They bring their families every year.”
One of the biggest draws for incoming tourists at the cafe, and anyone really, is all-you-can-eat pancakes and coffee for $4 every Friday. Not just regular pancakes either, but plate-sized behemoths. Customers can upgrade to blueberry pancakes for $4.50. The first order comes with two pancakes and only two or three customers have ever asked for a third, she said.
It’s something Cooper-Cravens started when she took over the business. Fridays were, for some unknown reason, the slowest day of the week, and it was a way to pull people in.
“It became a hit, especially with the campers in the summertime,” Cooper-Cravens said. “It’s a steal of a deal. You leave full and happy.”
•••
Reporter Eric Trent can be reached at etrent@chronline.com. Visit chronline.com/business for more coverage of local businesses.
