CODY — Tucked in a corner of the Park County Library is Pardners Cafe. The little cafe offers delicious food and great ambiance, but its mission goes beyond just being a go-to spot to grab a bite.

A volunteer-run enterprise, Pardners Cafe provides vocational training and experience for adults with developmental disabilities. They’re the “pardners” in Pardners Cafe, working with volunteer mentors in the kitchen, at the counter and in the dining room.

“I think people initially stop to see what we’ve created and then they keep coming because they like the food,” founder Kathy Liscum said. “I also think people like seeing the Pardners doing their jobs to the best of their ability.”

Worth The Trip

The cafe opened in February 2022 with six pardners, including Westy Kline and Jana Conklin.

“I like getting out of the house, being with my friends and introducing myself to people that haven’t been here,” Kline said.

Both work multiple days a week and do a little bit of everything.

“I’ll be at the counter or I’m in the dining room or sometimes I’ll be in the kitchen,” Conklin said. “I just like being with my friends and being around the community.”

With room for about 50 people, the cafe features Western decor and floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides of the dining room that showcase the pond outside the library.

While the menu isn’t large, each item is crafted using quality ingredients and is made from scratch.

In its early days, the cafe offered a free daily coffee and tea bar sponsored by various clubs and local residents, along with some cold bottled drinks and a few baked goods.

The coffee bar remains a popular staple and features a special blend provided by Cody Coffee.

Liscum said it’s just one of the many ways the community has stepped up to help the group. One of the large refrigerators in the kitchen as well as all the dishes used were donated.

“Every time we turned around, there were people that were willing to help us,” she said.

Super Soups

After about a month the cafe began including some simple lunch offerings, such as soup and paninis.

Liscum said they did a Facebook survey early on to find out people’s favorite soups and the two that came out on top were broccoli cheese and tortilla.

“Well, we tried tortilla soup and had like a bazillion garnishes so it was too complicated,” she said. “We tried broccoli cheese, and it just turned to paste so quickly. So, I just went on the internet and was searching for a soup that would not turn into wallpaper paste in the hours that we were here and I found the recipe for that Tuscan soup, and everybody loves it.”

The soup, which features hot Italian sausage, kale and sun-dried tomatoes, is one of the top sellers. Other soups vary and range from pumpkin curry to white chicken chili to old fashioned chicken noodle among others.

The paninis include triple cheese; ham, Swiss and apple; turkey pesto; and Texas turkey, which features turkey, mozzarella, arugula and jalapeno jelly.

There also are flatbread pizzas such as the Margherita, while salad offerings include a seasonal salad featuring mandarin oranges, dried cranberries, almonds, parmesan, chicken and an orange-poppyseed dressing. Or try the taco salad piled high with your favorite taco toppings.

Take It Up A Notch

The menu took a leap when chef Erika Decker took over the kitchen in November. Decker was looking for opportunities for her daughter, who is one of the pardners.

“She has provided us with a ton of expertise, and she has all these great ideas,” Liscum said.

It’s the specials where Decker’s influence truly shines, and the offerings continue to grow in popularity.

Fig and prosciutto flatbread with arugula and mozzarella, pimento cheese BLT on toasted brioche and a rotating variety of tacos from southwestern grilled chicken to al pastor to fish have been well received, as have the quesadillas and quiche.

“We try to change it up a little bit because we have a high return rate,” Liscum said of the specials. “We’re only open from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, so it’s mostly people who are retired and at the library anyway. Our return rate is anywhere between 67-85%.

In the morning, try the breakfast sandwich or stuffed biscuit, which true to its name is stuffed with egg, cheese, sausage and a house-made gravy.

For those with a sweet tooth, there’s chocolate chunk, salted caramel crunch and lemon blueberry cookies. Scones, brownies, muffins and the occasional cupcake or chocolate-covered strawberry also are available.

Providing Meaningful Work

The idea for the cafe began to form about six years ago when Liscum’s son Colin Christensen, who has Down syndrome, was nearing the end of his time in public school. As she looked for vocational opportunities, she found there wasn’t much available in Cody.

Having previously lived in Texas, Liscum was familiar with a nonprofit residential and vocational community for adults with disabilities there called Brookwood. Its mission is to provide an educational environment that creates meaningful work, builds a sense of belonging and awakens a feeling of purpose in the lives of adults with disabilities.

A part of that is the Brookwood satellite operation BIG (Brookwood in Georgetown). It included a cafe serving breakfast and lunch, and a shop with unique products handcrafted by Brookwood residents.

“One of the things that is so remarkable about Brookwood and BIG is they both started in a mom’s backyard,” Liscum said. “We were interested because of Colin, so we went down there to have lunch while we were visiting. A gentleman was walking through the cafe and, as it worked out, he was their fundraiser.”

Liscum mentioned starting something similar in Wyoming and was encouraged to attend Brookwood’s network days, where they share what they’ve learned during their more than 30 years of operation.

“You know, they like the concept of failing forward,” Liscum said. “So they talked about what’s worked and what hasn’t.”

Pandemic Pause

After attending the event in 2019 with her husband, Liscum felt inspired and upon returning to Cody began talking to community members about her ideas. She received mainly positive feedback and had a plan for a pilot day camp focused on crafts set to start in the summer of 2020. But then the pandemic hit and Cody Pardners was put on pause.

More than a year later as things started to open again, Liscum wanted to get the nonprofit back on track. At the time, Christensen was busing tables at Heritage Bakery & Bistro, a small coffee shop, lunch spot and bakery co-owned by Patsy Carpenter.

Liscum shared her ideas, which included making food, and Carpenter allowed the group to work out of her bakery. They made pre-packaged dinners and also hosted a 20-person Italian dinner, but the bistro only has a handful of tables and needed more space if it wanted to grow.

It was then that local real estate agent Jan Brenner mentioned the restaurant space at the Park County Library.

The county-owned Biblio Bistro was open from 2008-2018, but operated at a consistent loss. Other for-profit restaurants that tried the space struggled as well, as they were only able to operate during library hours and weren’t allowed to advertise outside the building.

“It seemed like the perfect fit for us,” Liscum said. “We don’t want long hours and we can’t afford to advertise.”

So she put together a presentation for the Park County Commission, as it oversees the space.

“I’ve never done a business plan in my life,” she said. “I was a surgeon in my previous life before we moved here, but I presented why we wanted to do it and how it would work.”

The commissioners approved the plan and the non-profit leases the building for just a small fee.

Offering More Opportunities

Since opening a little more than two years ago, Cody Pardners and the cafe continue to grow. There are 13 pardners working there, and while they started as volunteers, Liscum said the cafe recently began making enough that they are able to offer wages.

There also are 25-30 volunteers, with most serving as mentors working individually with each pardner to make sure each is supported in every part of their jobs. Others are behind the scenes doing laundry, helping with crafts and coordinating social activities.

As a nonprofit, much of the money earned through the cafe goes to provide social opportunities for the pardners at least four times a year, including attending the Cody Stampede Rodeo and going to a water park in Billings.

“Now we do things way more than quarterly,” Liscum said. “On one of our first trips we went to Billings and stayed overnight, ate at a couple of restaurants and went to a magic show. We’ve spent a fair amount of money doing really cool things that they wouldn’t necessarily otherwise get to do.”

While Pardners Cafe is its largest enterprise, Cody Pardners has others focuses as well including attaching labels to mailers for the Cody Travel Council. They also create crafts that are sold at the cafe including hand-dyed scarves, decorative holiday centerpieces and fairy wand decorations for plants.

“I would like to have some other enterprises because not everybody, number one, wants to work in food service and not everybody has the stamina or the abilities,” Liscum said.

She has some other ideas for work including filing, shredding or even helping hang posters around town. They have an additional space in the Park County Complex upstairs from the library that would work for those types of jobs.

“Our big, hairy audacious goal is a residential community,” she said. “A lot of us are older parents, and what do you do when you have a kid that really is 100% dependent on you? I would like optimally that when Collin’s last surviving parent dies, he has his same job, he lives in the same place and he has his same friends.

“It’d be hard enough to lose your parent, it’d be even harder to lose everything that’s familiar.”

In the more near future, though, Liscum wants to spotlight the pardners and also highlight what the cafe means to them and their families.

“Personally, Colin loves to come to work,” she said. “He was sick several months ago with a fever so he couldn’t go. But he still got all his clothes out and wanted to get ready. That’s just the life he likes, he likes doing things.”