A local Aberdeen business has bought another one in town and it sounds like that might be the best decision for both the outgoing and incoming owners.

Daniel Crocker and his wife Jessica, who own Waugh’s Men’s and Women’s Apparel, have acquired Tinderbox Coffee Roasters’ downtown location — 113 E. Wishkah St — from Dee Troeh. The downtown location has been open since 2017, according to Grays Harbor Talk.

While the couple has been at Tinderbox for most days since early July, they didn’t officially take over the cafe until Friday.

Daniel explained how the acquisition came to be.

“We got approached to buy it because she had time constraints for this and she got a new position at the hospital,” Daniel said of the previous owner. “She offered it to us to buy it, so we were like ‘why not?’ We always liked the coffee and we wanted to continue it, especially with roasting.”

The Crockers want to expand the roasting Tinderbox does, as well as expand the shop’s repertoire so it’s a full cafe.

“We’re going to start doing soups every day, sandwiches, maybe salads if we can find somewhere to get salads,” Daniel said. “We’re starting soups right now. (Friday was) lobster bisque.”

Every Monday this month, Tinderbox will serve Cheddar Broccoli soup. The idea is to change the soup choices out every month and to offer a different soup every day.

“That’s the plan so far,” Daniel said. “We know plans might change but that’s the plan as we see fit right now.”

Daniel said how offering sandwiches and soups will solve “some problems.” Later, the plan is to “expand on the breakfast menu” once the Crockers get Tinderbox running how they see fit in the next month or month-and-a-half.

“Once we find out what sells, what doesn’t sell, we’ll start integrating more stuff in,” Daniel said.

While those plans are in the mix for Daniel and Jessica, who will manage the restaurant since Daniel wants to be behind the scenes, one thing the couple doesn’t want to change is the price of the products. That’s a real positive for their customers, considering Dan’s favorite part about Tinderbox.

“It’s been the regular customers we see,” Daniel said. “We just had one who left, he comes here every day at 7 o’clock in the morning, leaves at 9 with his dog. It’s nice to see him every day. It nice to see other customers throughout the day you get to know.”

Jessica’s favorite part of the shop is the coffee. But her current favorite drink is the Horchata Chai. Tinderbox is well-known for its coffee, espresso, Lotus drinks and its several shelves of tea choices.

The Crockers have owned Waugh’s Men’s and Women’s Apparel — 110 E. Heron St., for close to three years.

According to Dan, they’ve run Waugh’s successfully.

“We’ve grown it since the last owners (there,)” Daniel said. “We’re hoping to do the same here. I think how we grow this here is it has to be open every single day, consistently.”

The lack of consistent hours through the last several months has frustrated customers, so the word consistency should be music for the ears of people in need of a morning jolt before work.

The plan for the next couple months, according to the Crockers, is to keep the cafe open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. every single day.

“The weekends might change a little, might be 8 (a.m.,) but we’re gonna keep it 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. right now and see the next month or two if we need to open an hour later on the weekends,” Daniel said.

Daniel said another person bought the Tinderbox Drive-thru — 1019 E. Wishkah St. He explained why they didn’t include the drive-thru in their purchase of the downtown location.

“I really wanted to focus on the cafe, plus the roast machine is here,” Daniel said. “We thought the best route to keep (the cafe) alive right now would not take on the drive-thru and focus on the cafe and actually make it successful.”

Jessica said she and Daniel would “definitely” like to have a drive-thru again in the future.

“But as of right now it needs to be just a cafe,” Daniel said. “Once we get it back and running where it used to be, we’re hoping to expand. But we have to have the cafe first to see what we want to do with it.”

While the couple sees a few challenges to running both Waugh’s and Tinderbox, Daniel sounds confident they can “overcome” them easily.

“Jessica’s gonna be here, she can manage people,” Daniel said. “And then I have employees over there so if I need to come over here real quick I can.”

Jessica pointed to time management as an issue. Daniel agreed.

“Time management’s gonna be the problem right now, but we knew that in the beginning,” Daniel said. “Once we figure it out we’re gonna be rolling.”

One part of the acquisition Daniel and Jessica are glad to inherit is the employee base. They only lost one Tinderbox employee during the acquisition. According to Daniel, that person quit on their own accord. The Crockers see the staff stability as a real plus.

While the cafe will still serve Ghiradelli sauces to its customers, Daniel wanted an additional choice, so the couple is adding Hershey’s to the menu.

“I just wanted Hershey’s because I like Hershey’s,” Daniel said. “I think we needed a milk chocolate instead of just a dark chocolate. If Hershey’s doesn’t work out, we’re gonna play with some stuff and make some recipes of our own so people know they can get here something different than other stands.”

A recent favorite drink of Daniel’s was the banana nut blended drink. For people who want something different, new specials are releasing this month.

But for some people, it’s the consistency needed before a long day at work, which could mean something as simple as a large mocha with an extra pump of chocolate. The Crockers are happy to provide.

“It never hurts to have extra chocolate,” Jessica said.

Contact Reporter Matthew N. Wells at matthew.wells@thedailyworld.com.