Coffee house with a mission

RIVER FALLS – Over the past few years, River Falls has had a limited option of coffee shops in town. There’s the Caribou Coffee located in Family Fresh, Selah Vie Bistro and Coffee Cottage on the north end of downtown and since August 2019, right next to the Dairy Queen has sat the Blind Munchies.

The Blind Munchies is fairly new to River Falls, but it has been a brand in western Wisconsin for decades. The business itself has been a non-profit run through Street Level Ministries, a Christian organization based in Menomonie that has expanded

Photo by Theodore Tollefson itself as a student faith organization at the UW-River Falls, UW-Stout, and UW-Superior campuses.

Tim Dodson, who started the Blind Munchies in Menomonie in 1997 under the name the Scarlet Pumpernickel, shared his original plan for the store.

“The first Blind Munchies up here was in Menomonie and we opened up a second one on Water Street in Eau Claire. When I ran two of them it was stretching me and it was just too much. You have to understand that when these places opened, they were mine. I came to Menomonie for this business. Or at least I thought,” said Dodson. “Then I got involved in ministry. I became an elder, I became the assistant pastor, then I became senior pastor. So something had to give, restaurant or ministry. I chose to give up the restaurant. Instead of just closing it, I gave it all to the campus organization, Street Level Ministries.”

Jonah Johnston, the manager of the Blind Munchies in River Falls, shared his hopes for more opportunities for the organization to grow in River Falls, anticipating a normal academic year for UW-River Falls in the autumn.

“Well, it's been interesting because we opened in late 2019 and within six months, we were in the COVID-19 pandemic,” Johnston said. “So we've never known normal. But we're enthusiastic, because campus appears to be going back to normal. We're looking at maybe getting back on campus, which we couldn't do at all last year. I think there's going to be a lot of opportunities in the next year. I think there's just going to be more students here than there were last year.”

The Blind Munchies has been able to make an impact in the River Falls community as it’s grown throughout the past three years. The Blind Munchies originally arrived in town as a food truck commonly found at the center of the UW-River Falls campus during the 2018-19 academic year. Now they’re often seen serving people at the River Falls Music in the Park performances on Thursdays and Saturdays.

Johnston hopes it will not only grow as a popular coffee shop in River Falls, but also a community hub.

“We're very much about community here. Our hope would be that we make more connections, meet more people on campus and the community and that this becomes a spot where it's no, not just for cheap coffee, but relationships and connections with people. And we're very open and willing to push us as far as it'll go. Yeah. If it looks like a big space, like Menomonie, fantastic, then we can expand room for concerts. Or if this is going in a slightly different direction with all that,” said Johnston.

As a non-profit, the Blind Munchies is able to provide all items on their menu at an affordable price. Aside from Johnston and his wife Jessica, all others working behind the counter at the Blind Munchies are volunteers.

“I'd like for prices to remain low. People can feel like they can go out and hang out in a coffee shop and not have anything cost them an arm and a leg and that includes even college kids wanting to go hang out in coffee houses. Usually the price forces them out,” said Dodson on the Blind Munchies’ affordability.

The name Blind Munchies was not Dodson’s original idea. He inherited it from an eatery in Des Moines, Iowa, owned by a hippie couple. The eatery, where Dodson spent a lot of time in high school, went under the name from 1970-1988.

“For me it was a matter of when I landed in Menomonie that I wanted to carry on the name, I didn't want the spirit to die. So we cranked it back up again to make the brand live again,” said Dodson.

Blind Munchies is located at 115 W. Cascade Ave. They are open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and 3-5 p.m. Sundays. To learn more, visit theblindmunchies.com