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Bertrand's Flippin' Sweet Café is...well, flippin' sweet
This is a story about how a small-town café got a new lease on life. But it’s also a story about the profound effect children have in a marriage. Because if you learn nothing else from parenthood, the one thing most of us do learn is that you can do things, even if you’ve never done them before.
Jason Alexander and his wife Felicia Fowler-Alexander married 12 years ago. She had a film background; he was in theater. Having only themselves to worry about, they lived places and took jobs that fancied them. They lived in Arizona and Colorado for a time, and then spent the last five years in San Francisco.
A stint at Alcatraz
“We were both working on Alcatraz Island,” Felicia says matter-of-factly, “so we had these spectacular views of San Francisco practically all the time.”
Alcatraz?
“It’s a national park now,” Felicia explains. “I worked in the cell house and supervised the evening tour, which was the big tour of the facility. It was a really fun job. Jason worked in the administration department, but he also worked on the docks and greeted the boats as they came in because he has such a big voice.”
Things changed when Jason and Felicia realized they were expecting a baby.
“Maybe we could handle living in a little studio apartment for way too much money if it was just us,” she said. “But a little one changes everything.”
One thing it changed was they both continued to work at Alcatraz, but on opposite shifts, so one of them would be able to take care of the baby.
“Our baby was a real celebrity to the crew on the boat,” Felicia said. “We’d just pass him off between us as one was coming to work and the other was going home.”
Felicia says they followed that schedule for most of a year but knew they couldn’t continue that way. “We knew we had to do something else. We just never had any time together.”
An interesting proposal
Not too long before all this took place, Felicia’s mother, Marilyn Fowler had returned to her childhood home in Bertrand, a town of about 800 in south-central Nebraska.
One day, Felicia got a call from her mother saying she’d seen a “for sale” sign in the window of the local café. “We were still trying to figure out what to do, but my mom was very positive that this was it – that we should buy the café and all do it together.” Felicia’s brother, Dan Fowler, had been working at Cabella’s for years, but was ready for a different kind of challenge.
“Jason and Dan and I did the remodeling,” Felicia says. “Because we had a background in theater and set design, we knew how to do a lot of the work, and how to make a visual impact.”
Actually, that’s a bit modest.
The old Bertrand Café had been a fixture on Bertrand’s main street for decades, but it had been decades since anything much changed about it. When the Flippin’ Sweet came in, the change was remarkable.
Creating the Fippin' Sweet
In creating the Flippin’ Sweet Café (the name comes from a line in the film Napoleon Dynamite) the Alexanders and Fowlers created a casual, contemporary space that would be at home in many an upscale resort community. Tomato soup colored walls top a crisp white wainscot and conspicuously clean tile floor, with a line of identically-framed photos centered in each section.
The menu has also changed. For one thing, it has a flip, mouthy tone. Check out this description of “The Viking” burger: “You got to be one to eat one,” it says. “It’s a double burger, that’s a nearly a pound o’ meat, topped with a 1/4-pound hot dog – oh yeah, we went there. Cover it with chili cheese, and oh, did I mention bacon? That’s right.”
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Also untypical of a small-town café are dishes such as Pasta Rustica – grilled chicken and prosciutto on bow-tie pasta with a garlic-cream sauce – and the Pile o’ Sliders – an East Coast favorite comprising five mini-burgers piled with cheese and onions.
The Flippin’ Sweet is also becoming well known throughout the region for it’s generous pizzas and calzones. (“Our calzones are built for two or more,” says the menu. “Fly solo at your own risk.”)
“Jason and I do most of the cooking,”Felicia says, “and we developed the menu from things we like to cook. None of us has owned a restaurant before. I worked for the Paradise Café and Bakery in Phoenix and a few other restaurants, but that’s about it.”
“We are Food Network addicts,”she says, “We’re creating specials all the time.”
The word is getting around
Although the Flippin’ Sweet has only been open a few weeks – it’s grand opening was delayed by the New Years weekend ice storm – it’s been getting a lot of attention from throughout the region.
“We have people coming in from Kearney and Lexington and Cozad,”Felicia says. “People seem to like what we’re doing and the word is getting around.”
If you’re anywhere near Bertrand, our advice is to check out the Flippin’ Sweet. It’s flippin’ sweet.
Who To Contact...
Flippin' Sweet Cafe
Felicia Fowler-Alexander
613 Minor Ave.
Bertrand, Nebraska 68927
308-472-3754
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