Dan Meaud, of the Margaret/Dunrea area, has purchased the old Ag (GO) office from the Province of Manitoba and the old funeral home from Wheatland. This all started in 2013 when the former power engineer left Alberta to move to the area to farm with his brother. When this did not work out, he was looking for another idea. Returning to the “boiler business” did not hold a lot of appeal. One day he had coffee at the Home Hotel in Boissevain and noticed a for sale sign on a neighboring building with a Heritage Tree in its yard.
“I looked at the building,” Meaud explained, “and it had lots of character. I was blown away by the (willow) tree.”
A coffee enthusiast, he always wanted to run a coffee shop and the old Ag office would fit perfectly. With the Sawmill doing a good job with a coffee house on the other end of South Railway, he knew he would have to add some value.
“I love pizza, so I thought pizza and coffee would be a perfect fit for the building.”
He put an offer in for the building, and as it was government owned, it took a while. In the intervening time, he built a coffee cart, which was seen at Canada Day. When that was ready, he heard he was getting the Ag Office.
Once he knew that for sure, he put an offer in to the Nichol’s, who own the funeral home. He wanted to put a patio out back on his shop and did not want customers looking at an old building, one the operators were thinking of getting rid of anyway. He plans to tear it down.
“If I use the space later on, I can,” he said. “It just makes a better view.”
He expects it to come down fairly soon.
As for the shop, he has taken a shine to Dogwood coffee, a company out of Winnipeg that is working with partners in Minneapolis. He likes the way they run things and is interested in providing a variety of their product.
For pizza, Meaud has been visiting different pizza parlors and is partial to shops that allow their dough to ferment more – up to 72 hours. Although he does not have an oven at the moment, he has found a company that will put together a wood-fire pizza oven when he needs it. The wood-fire oven is best suited to the Neapolitan style, which is what he will be serving.
How everything will fit in will be determined once he gets a better look in the building. Meaud has found the interior walls are not load bearing, so they can be changed easily. They need to clean some asbestos out of a crawl space, and then open up the inside. Once completed, he can start planning the layout and what will go where.
The plan is for it to seat about 20 inside, and another 20 on the patio. He will also be serving takeout pizza.
As for staff, this too will need sorting out. Meaud is hoping his coffee cart will help him train staff to be baristas, so they are ready to move into the building when it opens. There will also have to be someone to make the pizza.
In honour of the tree in the back yard, the shop will be called the Willow Branch.
A lot of work has to be done, so Meaud is hoping to be ready spring to fall in 2018. If they can do some projects before the ground freezes this fall, work inside in the winter while training staff, and get finished, it should be doable. As for his hopes, he looks to the exchange district in Winnipeg, where old buildings are getting a facelift for inspiration.
“It helps the general character,” Meaud said. “I hope it can be a space where people can come and relax, have a cup of coffee and a piece of pizza, enjoy the willow and the mural across the street. Hopefully, we can bring people further down main street and get people enjoying downtown Boissevain like they did years ago.”
by PAUL RAYNER, Recorder staff
PHOTOS BY ANNA LATIMER, Recorder Staff