In Part Two of Remembering the Cypress Creek Cafe, we’ll hear more from Bruce Calkins and others about the early days of the cafe.
Once the papers were signed, the Calkins set about remodeling, organizing the kitchen and putting together a menu. Initially, a co-worker from the Woodcreek Resort agreed to jump in as a kitchen manager for a few months to get the kitchen going.
Early on, Bruce brought in West Humphries. “He was a manager of the Capital Oyster Bar in Austin, which is where I worked before starting CCC. He became our restaurant manager for several years, but with his kitchen experience he focused primarily on the kitchen. West was a critical part of our early success and was very popular with the staff and customers alike.”
“From the very beginning, we got lucky with our employees,” Bruce said. “There were several groups of local family siblings who were key players in the early days, like Michael Gibson, and his two siblings Kelly and Pat. Our first bookkeeper, Martha Kelly, ushered in her four children – Kevin, Michael, Stacey and Patrick – over the years to work here.”
And there was the Hearne family. Chris Hearne joined the cafe at 18 and stayed on as the first head breakfast cook. “He was unbelievably talented,” Bruce remembers. “His sister, Lisa, was also an original waitress. Chris sadly died in a car accident just outside of town very soon after we opened.” Shelley Rybarski and Yvonne Lattomus, who still live in Wimberley, were also there as wait staff.
Other key personnel in the early years were Bobby Kimbrell, Dave Campbell and Randy Seale. “If anyone has lived here for 30 years, someone in their family probably worked for us,” Bruce said.
Tiffany Adams, who grew up in Wimberley, began working for the Calkins at the age of 14. “Bruce might claim it was luck that attracted good employees to the cafe, but it was more than that,” she said. “They treated everyone like family, from the guys washing the dishes to our wealthiest client. Bruce was extremely kind and humble and Dave was a sweet and incredibly funny man. They made it clear that if you came to work here, we expect you to be invested, like I’m investing in you.”
To this day, Tiffany, who administers the private Facebook page “CCC Memories,” says she hears one thing again and again from former staff, “This is the best place I ever worked. We were like a family.” For some, it seems, the brothers became big brothers and father figures.
Tiffany, who was an only child, was bussed to Hays High School in Buda for classes. “Sometimes other staff members would take me to school or pick me up before work, if my parents couldn’t. We related to each other like family because Bruce and Dave treated us like family.” During the years, she said, “We had a lot of good people come through here.”
Although the Calkins boys had never owned a restaurant before, they had years of experience in the hospitality industry before taking the leap with their purchase of the, then, Dinner Bell restaurant. “I probably learned the most from my two years at Steak ‘N Ale,” Bruce said, “because it was such a well-run restaurant operation. We knew just enough to jump in, but had we known more about the realities and difficulties of owning a restaurant, we probably wouldn’t have done it.”
Creating the menu, he said, was simply a function of “having grown up in a home with a wonderful mother who was an exceptional cook. Our mom and dad grew up in New Orleans, so there was plenty of Cajun food influence in our kitchen.”
“Wimberley, in the early ‘80s,” Bruce continued, “was very quiet and did not have that many choices for dining out, so we felt like we needed a wide variety of menu items. It was the ‘all things for all people’ approach. It was not easy to pull off and not great for the bottom line, but we gave it our best shot.”
“From the day we opened, December 7, 1981, we served breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our intention was to make everything from scratch, which I’d say we 99% accomplished. We had a printed menu, but also a chalkboard menu with our specials of the day.”
Bruce said that he was introduced to black beans by a Cuban friend in Houston, and decided to make them a staple on their menu, including what probably became their best seller, the “famous” CCC black bean taco.
Jim Venable, who has lived in Wimberley since 1977, said he was at CCC quite a lot in the early days.
“The cafe was right in the middle of the square. Their food was really good, and Bruce was always working to make it better.”
“Our local customers came in multiple times a week,” Bruce said. “Dave and I were always open to suggestions from the staff. We gave everyone the freedom to throw in a recipe. If it looked good, we’d buy the ingredients and try it out.”
Soon after CCC opened, Bruce had the idea to expand a back room into a bar so that customers could enjoy alcoholic beverages with their meals. At the time CCC opened, Hays County was a dry county. To serve drinks, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission required businesses to establish a private club.
Part 3: Bringing the music - and good times - to Wimberley.
