{"id":10568,"date":"2016-02-18T07:55:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T14:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=10568"},"modified":"2016-02-18T07:56:49","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T14:56:49","slug":"still-another-coffee-shop-going-into-downtown-billings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/02\/still-another-coffee-shop-going-into-downtown-billings\/","title":{"rendered":"Still another coffee shop going into downtown Billings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ebon\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Lenny and Jaxi Howe are the owners of the new Ebon Coffee Collective in downtown Billings. Behind them, their friend John Beal does some work on the floor, with some help from the Howes’ 3-year-old son Emet.<\/p><\/div>\n

The downtown Billings coffee boom just keeps rolling along.<\/p>\n

Lenny and Jaxi Howes are busy remodeling a space at 2712 Second Ave. N. into Ebon Coffee Collective, a coffee shop and bakery that they hope to have open early in March.<\/p>\n

Renovations continue at two other nearby coffee shops going into old buildings\u2014MoAv Coffee House<\/a> at 2501 Montana Ave. and the Annex Coffeehouse and Bakery<\/a> at 2601 Minnesota Ave.<\/p>\n

The Howes are natives of Helena who\u2019ve been living in Billings since 2010. They both have lots of experience in the coffee business and had been thinking of opening their own coffee shop for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually hired Lenny for his first coffee job,\u201d Jaxi said, back at Morning Light Coffee Roasters in Helena. They both worked there and then at two other coffee shops in Helena, including the Coffee Spot, where Jaxi started her career as a baker.<\/p>\n

She gained more experience after they moved to Billings, where she worked the night shift as a baker for Joanie Swords at Harper and Madison. Lenny, meanwhile, found work as a barista and later as a trainer at Off the Leaf, which Jaxi described as the first serious coffee shop in Montana.<\/p>\n

She said she learned a lot about baking from Joanie, but the real lesson for both of them was watching two locally owned businesses\u2014Off the Leaf and Harper & Madison\u2014become successful without compromising on quality.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>They began thinking in earnest about opening their own place about a year ago. They wanted to be downtown, to take advantage of the foot traffic and to be part of the increasingly vibrant scene, but they looked at a few locations outside the downtown, too.<\/p>\n

Then their friend, Ryan Kabeary\u2014an alum of Off the Leaf now managing another downtown business, the Art House Cinema & Pub\u2014spotted the vacant storefront just south of City Hall on Second Avenue.<\/p>\n

The space, with big picture windows out front, a large bank of windows on the alley and an upper-deck seating area, had been a coffee shop for at least 25 years. Building owner Bill Honaker, who also owns Walkers Grill, said the first coffee shop there, Caf\u00e9 Jones, opened in 1991, when Todd\u2019s Plantation was the only other real coffee shop downtown.<\/p>\n

It later became Paula\u2019s Edibles and kept that name through two owners, then most recently was Mad Cupcakes, which closed late in 2015.<\/p>\n

Jaxi said she has no doubts that downtown Billings can support all the new coffee shops and the one established business, Rock Creek Coffee Roasters at Broadway and Second Avenue.<\/p>\n

In cities like San Francisco, she said, there might be three or four coffee shops a block apart, and locals like to frequent all of them. Billings, she said, \u201cis not tapped out by any means.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Howes, who have two sons, ages 3 and 1, are getting a lot of help with the renovation from their friend, John Beal. When Beal heard they were going to open a coffee shop, he asked if he could work for them after it opened.<\/p>\n

\"Ebon2\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Ebon Coffee Collective will be going into a space that has housed coffee shops for 25 years.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe said, \u2018What if we let you work your way into a job here?\u201d Lenny said, and Beal\u2019s been at it ever since, building countertops, refinishing floors and doing other construction work. One thing they won\u2019t change is the copper-colored pressed-tin ceiling in the front of the space.<\/p>\n

For the rest, they\u2019re using recycled or repurposed materials and furnishings as much as they can, which includes building counter tops out of salvaged barn wood.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering about that name, Ebon is a contraction of \u201cebony,\u201d another word for \u201cblack,\u201d as in black coffee. It\u2019s most commonly seen as a poetic contraction or as a word handy in crossword puzzles.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s a real word, but it\u2019s not very common,\u201d Lenny said.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re calling the store Ebon Coffee Collective because they plan to use one coffee roasted in Montana and two national roasts. To start, they plan to use coffee from Little Red Wagon, a roaster in Bozeman, as well as some from Gary Theisen\u2019s Revel Coffee Roasters in Billings.<\/p>\n

For a national supplier, they have so far settled on just one: Heart Coffee Roasters out of Seattle.<\/p>\n

Jaxi plans to put in an oven and bake on the premises, with an emphasis on gluten-free and dairy-free treats. She said she has always spent time around people with dietary restrictions and \u201cI think they deserve really yummy cookies.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also plans to bake scones and muffins, and to offer things like avocado toast at breakfast time. She won\u2019t have that many products, though, because the emphasis will be on coffee, about which they are both passionate, rather than on food.<\/p>\n

The Howes did some online crowd-funding and managed to raise $4,000, putting up their own money for the balance. One innovation they will introduce is the use of Mason jars rather than paper go-cups.<\/p>\n

Patrons can take the jars with them and bring them back for refills, and after 10 or 12 refills they\u2019ll get a free drink. Hours will be 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with limited hours on Sunday and closed on Monday.<\/p>\n

As for the other coffee shops under construction, MoAv has been having some delays with renovation and is now looking to open in late March or early April, while Annex Coffeehouse and Bakery is shooting for sometime in April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The downtown Billings coffee boom just keeps rolling along. Lenny and Jaxi Howes are busy remodeling a space at 2712 Second Ave. N. into Ebon Coffee Collective, a coffee shop and bakery that they hope to have open early in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[3762,723,3844,3846,3845,3343],"class_list":["post-10568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-diversions","tag-annex-coffeehouse-and-bakery","tag-bill-honaker","tag-ebon-coffee-collective","tag-john-beal","tag-lenny-and-jaxi-howes","tag-moav-coffee-house","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}