Local Food Champion of the Season
ADDRESS: 401 SW Jefferson Ave. Corvallis, OR 97333
Phone: 541-714-5322
Website: www.antsonalogcafe.com
Hours: Wed–Sat, 8am–2:30pm
Closed: Sun, Mon, Tues
OWNERS: Sally Starker and Wendy Little
YEARS IN BUSINESS: 5
WHAT THEY SELL: Coffee and tea, smoothies, acai bowls, sandwiches, soups, and baked goods
WHY YOU SHOULD GO: This cafe’s focus is on sustainability, education, supporting a vibrant local food system, minimizing waste, and offering good food for everyone regardless of dietary needs.
When you first walk in, Ants on a Log looks like a typical cafe. The menu looks typical too, and includes coffee, tea, smoothies, baked goods, and a variety of breakfast and lunch choices. But something soon becomes apparent if you pay attention: It’s one of the most mission-driven cafes you’ll ever encounter.
Co-owners Sally Starker and Wendy Little buy food directly from local organic farmers and businesses whenever possible. They make nearly everything they serve from scratch. You won’t find plastic cups or to-go containers here, and they are continuously experimenting with reusable to-go options to see what works for their customers. Nothing they make contains gluten or peanuts, and the menu is full of dairy-free, soy-free, vegetarian and vegan options. The sisters are committed to goals that make running a cafe extra challenging, yet five years in, Ant on a Log is going strong and one of my favorite cafes in town.
ANTS ON A LOG’S ORIGIN STORY:
Sally: I’ve had interest for a long time in educating in a different way, being a teacher for 17 years, and I realized there was this gap in our community educating about food systems and sustainability. I first started with a project with the Boys and Girls Club and healthy snacks, working with Cathy at White Winds Superfoods. I really wanted to start a little cafe there and teach kids how to cook . . . but it didn’t take on the momentum or the passion that I had for it.
So then this opportunity came. I knew a few people interested in starting a climbing gym, and we all started meeting as a group. I came in with the intention of wanting to have a cafe somewhere. As that evolved and this location became available, it was really a perfect space to start both of those things. I started talking with farmers, and making as many different connections as I could. Someone came in who had been managing at Nearly Normal’s (which was closing around that time) and she was such a great start for us too—and everybody’s brought such powerful things that have helped us grow.
Wendy: We came in with zero restaurant experience, just a passion for creating a space for health and well-being, and that was family-friendly. We had some good people at the beginning who had a lot of experience and could help us get started. Still it was a big learning curve! And it took a while for us to kind of find ourselves. We started experimenting with some different things and menus and hours, and our values, what is most important to us and what we were willing to let go. Quality and care and cleanliness, those are crucial for us. If we can’t do that, we don’t want to do it.
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO HAVE A CAFE THAT’S SO WELCOMING FOR THOSE WITH DIETARY RESTRICTIONS?
Sally: I’ve had some big health challenges, and a journey to see what would help me feel better, and that has been gluten and dairy free. Knowing how important this is and how hard it is to find this and feel safe that you can go eat somewhere, I really wanted to make just good food for anyone. We wanted to make a cafe that people could come who struggle to find places to eat where they can nourish themselves. We make all of our own flour blends. We want to control all of the ingredients, we don’t want added gums and added preservatives. It is a big job to do what we want to do. We don’t have soy. There’s soy in everything! It feels really good to be able to say we know what’s in here. We know where it came from.
WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES?
Wendy: The biggest challenge is having a family and a restaurant. Because the restaurant hours are also the hours that your family also needs you. So we have limited hours because we are both committed to being there for our families.
The hidden costs that come up, like maintaining equipment, are also a big challenge. We struggle to break even. Staffing has been an unexpected and very big challenge, establishing our culture, finding folks who want to be here for the reasons we’re here. Because we make EVERYTHING from scratch. So there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. We warn our staff, if you come, you have to be ready to work.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE FOLKS TO KNOW?
Sally: Quality and care are very important to us. We take our staff to visit our farms. We want them to know the love and care and time and work that goes into all the produce we’re getting . . . and then come back and treat that food with that same level of care and love and serve it that way and be able to talk to our customers about where these foods came from. Seeing and knowing that story is huge for sustaining our farms and keeping up what we’re trying to do.
The other piece that we’ve put a lot into is minimizing waste. We get tubs of produce rather than getting everything wrapped. We get our coffee roasted, and we get it in glass jars that go back and forth to the roaster. We use reusable glass and compostable paper towels. Our biggest waste is our gloves, which we’re required to use. We’re always looking and always trying to do more.
WHICH LOCAL FARMS AND FOOD BUSINESSES DO YOU PURCHASE FROM?
- Little Garden Organic Farm—spinach, parsley, green onions, strawberries – other produce as needed
- Totum Farm—chicken
- Riverland Family Farm—sweet potatoes, grapes, seasonal fruit and vegetables
- Deck Family Farm—eggs
- Rainshine Farm—seasonal produce
- Goodfoot Farm—seasonal produce
- Pacifica Coffee—coffee
- Woods Micro Gardens—microgreens
- Anderson Blues—blueberries
- Borage Farm—blackberries
- La Mancha Ranch and Orchard—apples and hazelnuts
- Lulubelle’s Creamery—cheese
(Interview and article by Carla Wise)
The Local Food Champion of the Season is a project of the Food Action Team that highlights nearby farms and food businesses growing, producing, and preparing foods using practices which renew and enrich the land and community.