Owner Kris Boettger recalls humble beginnings
By Anelia K. Dimitrova
What’s the happiest place in a winter storm for a writer?
A heart-warming ambiance with plenty of color?
The aroma of freshly brewed coffee?
Perhaps the comfort of a light lunch and a dessert to boost the creative spirit?
Barn Happy, at 11310 University Avenue in Cedar Falls, was it for me during an unexpected winter storm on a recent Wednesday that shut down schools and businesses in town.
A homemade soup, a tuna salad and a generous slice of a chocolate cake to boot landed on my table there as a shield from the howling wind and the snow drifts outside.
Owner Kris Boettger and her helpers – neighbors and longtime friends – braved the blizzard (after all, they didn’t have to go very far), and, in keeping with tradition, they opened the doors of the popular spot on the first Wednesday in March, the storm notwithstanding.
How could they do it otherwise?
Snow or blizzard, the soups were cooked, the salads and the quiches were ready to serve and the cakes were baked.
And even if no one came, it was still important to them to stick to the calendar and kick off the season as planned. Barn Happy is open March through Christmas, Wednesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Meet the owner
A charismatic woman and a born storyteller, Kris told me she didn’t even consider staying closed during the storm.
“So many people know I live on the property, and if I can’t get to work by walking 50 feet, they’re thinking, ‘Why is this lady even in business?'” she reasons, sipping her coffee.
“So I thought even if five people came, I wanted to be open since it was our opening day,” she continued. “And I knew I would have all my goods here, all my bakers were baking and said they were still coming, and so I was gonna have all my goodies and my lunch, so I thought let’s just see what happens.”
The weather may not have been great for the lunch crowd, but for me, it was an opportunity to chat with Kris without feeling guilty that the interview was taking her away from being a great hostess and catering to her customers.
How it started: A total God idea
Over the years, Kris has shared her story with many customers and friends and has had plenty of time to reflect on it.
And it always comes down to this: Every step of the way, she had leaned on her faith and, every step of the way, it worked. Or, as Kris would put it, it was a “total God idea.”
When you are in business, owners would agree, all kinds of unplanned emergencies happen and you learn to handle them as they come.
Put otherwise, you find a way to pull through the unexpected until the next unexpected thing happens.
That’s the rhythm of small business operations and that’s the way it works here, too.
But keeping going, in the face of any adversity, is the most important thing you can do, Kris says.
She should know.
With sweat and hope and prayer, some 23 years ago, she and her husband, Tim, now a pastor at Nazareth Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cedar Falls, turned a barn into a blissful spot for families and friends from near and far to gather for special occasions, coffee and lunch.
The backbreaking work of that transformation was a leap of faith for the couple, who were looking to start their life on a farm and raise their family there.
Kris, who majored in art, was looking to put herself to work, while her kids were at school.
“I wanted to get my kids on and off the school bus,” she says.
She prayed for a year and a half, but nothing seemed to come her way. Discouraged, Kris told her husband she didn’t think God cared about her quandary, but Tim urged her to continue to pray instead of complaining.
“And he said, well, actually, I think He does, and we’re gonna wait for a God idea because your good ideas make me tired,” he told her.
And then one night, as she was falling asleep, an idea presented itself to her.
“It wasn’t a dream. It was just an impression I had,” she says. “Clearly from God, because I would have never thought of it. It was a total God idea, otherwise you can’t do it.”
The vision was to convert the hog barn into a space for community, where neighbors can gather for coffee, homemade goods and conversation.
“So I said to my husband, I know that’s a God idea, I would have never thought that putting people and food and cake in a barn, so really, that’s how it started.”
Naming the business, she says, was also overwhelming as she was trying to cram into a couple of words all the things that the barn experience would offer.
“I had a whole notebook page full of bad, long, descriptive names,” she says.
“I was frustrated, and I said, ‘God, I can’t even think of a name, help me with the name.'”
And then help came again. Putting on her makeup one morning, Kris saw the word “happy” on a lotion bottle and had an epiphany: what she really wanted to do was own a business that brought people to their happy place.
She put place and purpose together and came up with Barn Happy.
“It just stuck,” she says.
It took about a year to upgrade the old barn, which housed 250 pigs on the lower level and hay bales on the top floor, into the space it is today – a bright, festively decorated interior, brimming with character.
The labor of cleaning it, power washing it, bleaching it, building a septic tank, was “a ton of work,” but being in their 30s, the Boettgers endured it.
So when once a customer asked, jokingly, if they could make her barn look like theirs, Kris thought, “Oh, heavens, no. I would never do that twice. It was so much work.”
Homesteading the property
Some 27 years ago, Kris was a stay-at-home mom, when she and Tim saw the 7-acre property on the edge of Cedar Falls for sale. Scraping by, as many young families would, they knew it was “way out of our price range.”
But they kept going back there, imagining how they would feel at home, if money was no hurdle. Eventually, they got to know the owner, who had moved to town by that time, and ultimately, he lowered the price so they could afford it.
“I really like your family,” he told them. “I’d like you to live there.”
So they did.
“We believe that was a miracle, too, because we really should have been the last people to own this,” she says. ” It was a total God story from the beginning to end, that’s all I would say.”
Happiness for many
Today, Barn Happy is a spot for many and a favorite mid-way point for people from Cedar Rapids, or Marshalltown and Dubuque to meet up.
On a busy day, about 100 customers come in to enjoy friends and food here.
Birthdays, baby showers, graduations, retirement celebrations, family reunions – they all have found their home away from home here. The interior, with its mismatched chairs around the tables, hearkens to the rural past when food was homemade from scratch.
Many family stories have unfolded here
One that stands out is the memorable story of the guy who proposed to his girlfriend on the second floor of the barn, which is now part of the Barn Happy folklore like the great food. It is an Iowa original, as many out-of-state customers often remark, and one that tells the story of many other families besides the Boettgers.
“We get a lot of tourism in the summer, and so it’s fun to hear from people outside of our area that think this is really something,” Kris says. “So, our local customers are what keep us going. I mean, we have so many regular customers that are so good to us and that’s really fun to see them come in and it’s kind of like you get to be like buddies.”
About a 100 Iowa small businesses, as well as seven bakers, each specializing in her own niche, offer their products here. Twenty people are employed at Barn Happy at various times. Two women are in charge of making the lunch items in what Kris calls a “simple, pretty straightforward little menu.”
Other items on the list are tuna, crab or chicken salad sandwiches, a creamy soup and a brothy or tomato soup and three types of quiches.
“Everybody seems to have fun doing their part, which is fun,” she says.
Asked what makes this operation hum so happily, Kris adds:
“Everything’s made from scratch, so that’s what makes it yummy. That’s what’s nice and happy. and people say, ‘Why is this soup so good?’ It’s because we use butter and we use vegetables and real food to make this. Same with our desserts, they’re all made from scratch, and they are also made with cream and butter and real, real stuff, so it tastes like it should because you’re eating in a barn that’s 100 years old this year. If we’re serving food in an old barn, we’re gonna use real food like they did 100 years ago, right?”