Restaurant Case Study: A Wild Thyme Cafe

At the end of 2006, after mulling over the idea to open up her own restaurant for years, Cindy Martel began putting the idea in motion. Cindy, who lives in the small town of Dunsmuir, California, had finally run out of places to work in the the town.

As the chef of the once-popular, now closed Gandy Dancer, Cindy enjoyed cooking for the collection of locals, fly fishermen, tourists and young people who walked in the door everyday. The baked goods at the Gandy Dancer were legendary, but even while riding high on compliments Cindy was dreaming of a way to take advantage of all the local organic goods produced by companies using sustainable methods in Siskiyou county, and the rest of northern California and southern Oregon. Her ideas grew so big that she had to open her own restaurant. In March of 2007, she secured funding and on November 20, 2008, Cindy opened the doors to A Wild Thyme Café, located on Dunsmuir Avenue, right at the center of town.

Cindy's vision behind A Wild Thyme Café was to promote sustainable, local eating in a funky, colorful space. She wanted to avoid the stuffy self importance that is sometimes associated with organic and local eating. A Wild Thyme Café delivers, featuring brightly colored light fixtures, small but eye-catching paintings and sunny golden walls. The polished concrete floor adds to the café's brightness. Learn more about Restaurant Design on a Tight Budget.

Cindy's customer base consists mainly of locals currently, but she's awaiting the annual influx of fly fishermen who will flock to the area from April until November. Lured by the cold fresh water melting off the Siskiyou mountains, including Mt. Shasta, the fishermen are expected to boost Cindy's business. After all, breakfast offerings are thin in Dunsmuir, and take out breakfast options are even more scarce. And what fisherman doesn't want a hearty breakfast to start his or her day?

To take advantage of the swell in breakfast takeout traffic that Cindy predicts will come with fishing season, Cindy designed many of her breakfast offerings with them in mind. On A Wild Thyme Café's current menu, she highlights stomach-filling dishes like three-egg scrambles stuffed with fresh vegetables and local meats and coconut french toast served with sides of either applewood bacon or breakfast sausage. There's even a hand held breakfast quesadilla assembled in a portable tortilla. Also offered are fresh fruits, steel cut oatmeal and tofu scrambles for the more health-conscious customers. Read more about how the Best Restaurants Look for New Opportunities.

How MustHaveMenus Helped A Wild Thyme Café After figuring out A Wild Thyme Café's breakfast offerings, it was time for Cindy to produce a menu. Cindy initially considered hiring a graphic designer to design it, and to have the menu professionally printed, but two things were stopping her—the cost and the slow turnaround. With graphic designers charging upwards of $50 an hour, and turnaround times for commercial printers often stretching into days, Cindy decided to handle menu design and printing herself.

Because she wanted menus that looked inviting enough to be grabbed up by customers on the go, she knew she needed a bright recognizable design. And because she knew she wanted a large percentage of her business to be take away, the menu had to look good on paper that she could give away. After wrestling with the menu's design herself, Cindy stumbled upon MustHaveMenus, where she found designs that she felt fit the theme of her restaurant. Once she downloaded the menus and changed the sample text to reflect her offerings, Cindy had a menu perfect for her café. A menu that, if needed, she could print 100 copies and she could change on a moment's notice to reflect a new delivery of fresh vegetables or other local specialtiy. Learn more about Basic Restaurant Menu Layout.

How A Wild Thyme Café Helped MustHaveMenus
A chance meeting at A Wild Thyme Café allowed the MustHaveMenu team to respond to a customer's need. One of our graphic designers happened to meet with Cindy and asked what she needed from us. Cindy mentioned that the menu designs were right on target, but that she needed a longer, legal sized page to fit all of her dishes. With this knowledge in mind, the MustHaveMenu designers went to work creating long breakfast menus to add to the breakfast menu set. Cindy downloaded the Flower Breakfast Menu Long and has been using it at A Wild Thyme Café ever since.

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