Midwest Rubs and a Coffee Shop Find a Home in Colonial Mall

Vacant for nearly eight years, someone is giving the former bakery spot in St. Michael's Colonial Mall a new life.

It's a strange combination, but one that works perfectly for Kim Walden, Richard Brown and Jason Strickland, who opened Midwest Rubs and Sadie's Coffee Shop today (Monday, April 23).

Brown, of St. Michael, has been making his own blends of seasonings and “rubs” for the last 15 years just for fun.

“I like cooking and barbequing and usually it was just me messing around in the kitchen because it was something I liked doing,” Brown said last week.

That was until last year when Brown’s friend, Jason Strickland, tasted one and said, “Let’s sell these.”

So the two along with Brown’s wife, Kim Walden, decided to do just that.

Brown and Strickland began work on what used to be the St. Michael bakery in Colonial Mall (next to ) back in November. “It needed a lot of work to bring it up to code and get licensed for the department of agriculture,” Brown said.

The space has been vacant since early 2005.

The trio decided the back area–which used to contain freezers, ovens and other baking equipment–would be the perfect place for mixing, bottling, labeling and boxing up their products to sell.

The complicated part was duplicating a recipe used previously for a couple steaks or a pound of hamburger and figuring out what would work on a grander scale.

“It was a lot of trial and error,” Walden said. “A lot of mixing up the ingredients to make sure the desired effect and taste would happen once the meat was cooked.”

Now the three have 10 different rubs on the market that are being sold in 70 locations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, including local favorites , , Center Cut Meats and Brothers. Also, they don’t ship a single product. “We deliver everything,” Brown said.

Each part of the process is done by hand from the measuring and mixing of ingredients to the labeling of the bottles and finally to the actual bottling process.

“The first time we tried bottling, it took us three days to bottle 1,000 bottles. Now we can do that in a day without a problem,” said Brown.

The recipes are all top secret information, but are all natural and free from MSG’s and preservatives. All but one of the rubs work on anything from pork to steak to chicken. One of the rubs is specifically for chicken, and Brown says it’s pretty good on eggs too.

With operations happening in the back, the trio needed a store front. A store selling meat rubs was not what they had in mind.

So the idea for Sadie’s Coffee was born. With both a taekwondo studio and dance studio on site in addition to post office, church office and other miscellaneous traffic in the building, the location couldn’t be better.

“The evenings are when we expect to be busier as there are always lots of parents waiting for their kids in the hallways [of Colonial Mall],” said Walden.

The coffee shop opened this morning with a grand opening to follow some time in May. The shop's named after Brown and Walden’s granddaughter, Sadie, and also happens to be a family name on both sides.

They’ll be serving Bull Run Coffee daily, and will specialize in a coffee of the month from a roaster out of Louisiana for flavored coffees. In addition to coffee, they’ll be serving slushies for kids and have an arrangement of pastries delivered daily from a local baker. Wi-fi is expected to come soon.

“We’re excited,” Walden said. “We had no plans of owning a coffee shop originally."

"Then again, I never thought I’d have my own seasonings in grocery stores,” Brown added.

Sadie’s Coffee will be open Monday-Thursday 6 a.mt to 9 p.m., Friday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m, and Saturday/Sunday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.