Cora and Lonnie Chandler are celebrating 25 years as owners of the Java House in downtown Vancouver. "We really enjoy what we're doing," Lonnie Chandler said. "We have a loyal clientele. We know everybody, we know their drinks."
What: Java House 25th anniversary celebration, with special deals and hourly giveaways of coffee, T-shirts and cookbooks
When: 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday
Where: Java House, 210 W. Evergreen Blvd., Vancouver
While on a trip to Seattle during his freshman year at Washington State University, Lonnie Chandler discovered a young company with delicious coffee. It was called Starbucks.
Chandler talked to the managers and got them to ship coffee beans to his frat house. There, he used a wood coffee grinder to make cups of coffee for himself and his frat brothers.
“They’d be lined up outside my door,” he said of his frat brothers. “I ended up charging them 10 cents a cup and making about five pounds of coffee a week.”
That wood coffee grinder now sits on a shelf at Java House, the West Evergreen Boulevard coffee shop that Chandler and his wife, Cora Chandler, own. On Friday, Java House will celebrate its 25th anniversary with discounts and giveaways.
Lonnie Chandler first brought up the idea for a coffeehouse while walking around downtown Vancouver after going out to dinner with his wife and another couple. His friend encouraged Lonnie to pursue the idea.
“You should open it,” the friend told him. “You’re the one who drives to Portland every day for coffee.”
At the time, Chandler was working for Delta Air Lines at Portland International Airport. Each morning on his way to work, Chandler would drive about eight or nine minutes out of his way to go get coffee at Coffee People.
Once he decided to try his hand at owning a coffeehouse, Chandler used his privileges as a Delta employee to fly to Italy, France, New York and San Francisco and look for the best coffee. Turns out, he didn’t have to go too far, as he eventually teamed up with Paul Thornton at Portland-based Coffee Bean International.
Java House still uses Coffee Bean International for its coffee and tea. That’s one of many things that remain the same now as when Java House opened in 1990. The walls are still painted the same wine color, and the cabinets are still the same. The Chandlers are still there, as are many loyal customers.
“I think people are loyal to us because of our consistency of service and quality,” Cora Chandler said. “Everybody’s like family here.”
While Java House has remained a constant, plenty else has changed in downtown.
“When we first opened, it was a banking and legal center down here,” Lonnie Chandler said. “There was no one around at night. You could lay in the street and not get run over.”
Chandler added that a lot of companies didn’t deliver to Vancouver back then, so he would leave his house at 3 a.m. to go pick up supplies. Things started to turn for the better in the mid-1990s, although there are still some changes the Chandlers would like to see come to Vancouver.
“We’d love to see more retail in the area,” Cora Chandler said.
While Lonnie Chandler estimates Java House does about three or four times as much business daily than it did when the store opened, the couple has faced some rough patches. They opened a second Java House location on 164th Avenue around 2000, but closed it three-and-a-half years later after the tech bubble burst. In 2004, they opened a vintage wine distribution company across the street from the downtown Java House, but closed it in 2010 after Lonnie had a stroke and felt he couldn’t work two jobs.
The couple, who will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary next year, also needed to learn how to both live and work together.
“It can be challenging at times,” Lonnie Chandler said. “It took us a few years to learn that you can’t take work stuff home, and that sometimes you say things at work to each other that you can’t take personally.”
He added that the first three or four years were especially hard for Cora , who kept her job at Nordstrom in Portland for four years after Java House opened. She would help her husband out in the morning and then after she got back from her Nordstrom job.
As for the future, both Chandlers said they don’t have plans on retiring anytime soon. Lonnie is 55 years old and Cora is 56.
“It is harder to work a full day now than it was 20 years ago, but the people make it worth it,” Lonnie Chandler said. “We’ve had so many great customers and employees over the year. We have employees who worked here years ago who still stop in, and now they’re bringing their own kids in and showing them where they used to work. I’d love to maybe sell the shop to a former employee, or a group of employees. I’d like to see Java House continue.”
What: Java House 25th anniversary celebration, with special deals and hourly giveaways of coffee, T-shirts and cookbooks
When: 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday
Where: Java House, 210 W. Evergreen Blvd., Vancouver
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