STILLWATER, Minnesota — When Craig Beemer sat his wife Deb down in a weathered greasy spoon along the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River 12 years ago, he asked what she thought about buying the midcentury eatery and running the joint together.
Her reaction was a blank stare.
“That was quickly followed by a sharp ‘You’re bleeping kidding, right?’” said Beemer.
He wasn’t. Despite having spent the year before out of work, the sour memory of his previous business partnership dissolving, and literally zero restaurant experience between the two of them, the Beemer family became the owners of a diner in need of some love.
Deb Beemer, 61, said she was so anxious about the instability of the restaurant business — 60% go under in the first year, 80% in five years — she went back to college in her 50s because she didn’t think Craig’s quixotic plan wouldn’t work.
“Those first few years, I was washing dishes, working a full-time job, and going to school,” she said.
Craig, 62, was washing dishes too. And sweeping the floors, changing light bulbs, fixing whatever broke, waiting on customers, and developing a reputation for good food and good service in this charming tourist town. He completely attributes the restaurant’s solid reputation to the staff he cultivated to enhance the business.
The first thing that catches your eye when you walk into the Oasis Café isn’t the gleaming white alabaster counter and the pretty turquoise booths: It’s the warmth and welcoming that comes from everyone who works there — or gobbles up unique delicacies such as macaroni and cheese pancakes with a sausage gravy kicker.
On a sunny Saturday morning, Craig is serving as the host, and Deb is walking around talking to customers with such familiarity you know they are regulars. Jay Jones, wearing a killer vintage Batman and Robin T-shirt, is waiting on tables with Lisa Kalmon-Diedrich, who is sporting a broad smile and a Green Bay Packers apron.
Six years ago, everything the Beemers built from scratch — the staff, the reputation, and a loyal customer base — all came tumbling down when Minnesota increased the hourly minimum wage. As any good business owner, Craig calculated how much that increase would cost him. So, he added a minimum wage fee at the bottom of each check.
“Rather than rolling the additional labor costs into the products we sold, I thought, ‘Why we don’t figure out what our costs will be on an annual basis divided out by the number of orders we expect to have based on history,’ and we came up with a minimum wage fee,” he said.
For every check processed, they charged 35 cents.
“We talked to people about it before doing it, and no one seemed to have a big deal with it,” he explained. “Our staff wasn’t nervous about it. So, we kept our pricing as it was, and we charged a 35-cent minimum wage fee.”
The first week it was implemented, they heard crickets. The next week, the family decided to go on its first vacation in several years and headed up to the boundary waters. While they were gone, one customer reacted to their bill with a strange look. They took a photo of it with the 35-cent charge and posted it online.
That’s when things got bad.
“The post of that bill went viral, and within what seems like minutes, people on the West Coast and Canada, on the East Coast, all started bombarding us with negative Yelp reviews and TripAdvisor reviews,” he explained.
Bad became worse. As they headed home from vacation, their phones lit up with people demanding refunds and social media posts that encouraged people to boycott the roadside café.
The death threats came next, followed by a bullet hole in one of their front windows right underneath the diner’s “open” sign.
All that hubbub for a mere 35-cent fee per check.
Deb said her initial reaction was to remove the 35-cent fee, but Craig held firm. “My reaction was, ‘We’ve already pissed off half the world. Let’s just keep our heads down and see where it goes.'”
The ordeal went on for months. They lost some customers, but gained more.
Six years later, they are still standing. They pay their employees well, provide their full-time staff a healthcare plan better than their own, and never lost an employee during the entire ordeal.
The Beemer family has lived the highs and lows of achieving the great American Dream. It is a story about taking a risk, resilience, faith, failing, and getting up every morning and trying to do a better job the next day.
On a brisk, sunny Saturday morning on the edge of town near historic caves, the Oasis Café’s spacious parking lot is packed so full that vehicles are parked alongside state route 95. Over on the frozen river, fishermen already have their poles in, waiting for the big catch.
“We are successful because my husband never stops trying to be better. Sometimes he fails, but when he does, he solves the problem and always continues the search to be better.”
