BETH RINER

Contributor

The Roost Café, a small-town coffee shop with a cozy, inviting atmosphere, handcrafted coffees, signature sandwiches, and delectable bakery treats, has opened its doors in Pelham.

Located at 1778 US Hwy 41, the café is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Owner Kim Partin and her carefully assembled team spent the past year preparing for their first customers. “When people come here, I want them to feel like they’re at home,” Partin said. “I am excited about the team I’m working with and the fact that I have the opportunity to serve the residents of Pelham and the surrounding community.”

Born in Decatur, Ala., Partin came here as a young teacher to Tracy City Elementary, where she taught third grade for 14 years before moving to Monteagle Elementary School. Her teaching career lasted nearly 40 years with her officially stepping away from her work as a reading interventionist the week before the café opened. She loved teaching and said she would have taught until she died if not for the café.

“I went to MTSU,” Partin said. “My roommate was from this area, and we were both born to be teachers.” When they graduated in 1987, Partin followed her roommate, Beverly Smith, back home to Grundy County and began teaching. The two remain best friends to this day.

Partin met her husband, Mike, who’s now the chief executive officer of Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative (SVEC), in 1990. “He was teaching at Grundy County High School, and he was running for public office – I don’t remember which one,” she recalled. “He knocked on my door and asked me to vote for him and asked me on a date. The rest is history. We’ve been married for 35 years. We have two children and live in Pelham on his family farm. It’s been in his family for over 200 years.”

Throughout her years of teaching, Partin earned a reputation for knowing her way around the kitchen. She’d often sell her curry chicken salad, pineapple jalapeno pimento cheese, and thaw-and-bake casseroles online through the South Cumberland Farmer’s Market. “I come from a background of good cooks in Alabama,” she said. “My grandmothers were good cooks. My mother is an excellent cook. That’s where I learned to do a lot of my recipes.”

She was on her lunch break at school when her husband called out of the blue to tell her that he was bidding on the Gallery 41 coffee shop property, a popular Pelham eatery that had closed its doors due to health issues in the owner’s family. When she asked what he planned to do with it, he said he wanted to put an Airbnb in the back of it and have her run the coffee shop.

“I was stunned,” she laughed and added that he actually won the bid as they were talking. “We’ve done all kinds of things over the years. This has been fun.”

She’s especially enjoyed putting together her team. Pelham’s Kennedy Landis, who honed her barista skills working part-time at Hwy. 56, downtown Altamont’s funky little coffee shop, agreed to come onboard as manager. Partin’s also hired locals Erin Smith, Elin Sanders, Stevie King and Amayza Fulmer.

“They’re so cute, and they’re so much fun,” she explained. “They each have knowledge in different areas, and they’re all just coming together. That’s exciting for me. It’s somewhat like a classroom – just really small. They’re teaching me a lot too.”

Partin expects to spend most of her time in the café’s kitchen making sure the food is as close to perfect as it can get. “I have very high standards about the food that comes out of the kitchen. I’m very particular about it,” she said.

She’ll bake pastries like cinnamon rolls and eclairs that have to be made fresh daily, while her sister-in-law, Susan Partin, will make chess squares, brownies, orange scones, and cookies, including chocolate chip and a lemon one modeled after a favorite from the Gallery 41 days. Their desserts, which come in generous sizes, can easily be shared by two.

“We wanted a very simple dessert menu. We wanted things we thought people would come back for,” Partin said.

In the year leading up to their opening, Partin often took goodies to school for her co-workers to sample and vote on what tasted the best. “The Figgy Piggy and the Garden Toast were really popular items,” she said. 

She settled on four house sandwiches which sell for $12 and four signature sandwiches which sell for $13. Country toast is $10.

The Figgy Piggy comes on sourdough bread with mozzarella cheese, honey ham, fig jam, arugula, and balsamic glaze. The Garden Toast is also on sourdough with cream cheese, avocado, arugula, boiled egg, feta and balsamic glaze. The Garden Toast is actually Partin’s favorite thing on the menu.

She also expects the house-made curry chicken salad on cranberry toast to be a big hit. “It’s kinda like raisin bread, only made with cranberries. It gives it a little sweetness.”

Their signature coffees use a Guatemalan espresso bean ground in house and come in hot and iced versions.  

“I normally just drink black coffee, but we came up with a blueberry pie drink, and I really like it,” Partin said. Called ‘Sweet as Pie,’ the coffee features blueberry, vanilla and white chocolate with a cold foam.

They’ll also have vanilla soft serve ice cream. “It’s so versatile. You can get it in a cone or a cup. You can get a sundae. You can get a brownie sundae. We can turn it into a milkshake or a float or affogatos,” she said.

Customers can take home one of her frozen casseroles like chicken divan or lasagna for $25. Casseroles serve four to six.

Partin’s put as much care into the building as she did the menu. Inside, the café is decorated in a simple European farmhouse style. Artwork collected by the family over the years decorates the walls along with shelves filled with items for sale.

“We wanted to have things that went along with a bakery or café like rolling pins, cooking utensils, kitchen towels, potholders, serving bowls,” Partin said.

A massive, colorful oil painting of a rooster called “King of the Coop” dominates the back dining area and inspired the café’s name. It was a gift from Alto artist Sonia Ray, whose daughter owns Simply Southern Café right across Hwy 41 from The Roost Café.

“Because it was such a gift of magnitude, we wanted to center everything here around it,” Partin said. Roosters figure prominently in the café’s décor.

When she and her husband came across a coffee shop called The Roost during a trip to South Africa, they knew they’d found their name. Across the street from that coffee shop was a mural of tree that had points of interest in the South African region. They resolved then and there to do something similar on the side of their building back home. They asked local mural artist Keith Killebrew to paint it for them.

“We wanted to do a tree that was representative of things here in Pelham like the daffodil field and the bluebell island,” Partin said. They worked closely with Killebrew to design their mural which includes two selfie seats like the original.

“We wanted a place for people to come and take pictures and make memories,” Partin said. “We’re excited. The Pelham community took me in and accepted me. I was an outsider, and they’ve done so many wonderful things over the years for my children, myself and my husband. They’ve supported us in every endeavor, and I feel like this is an opportunity to give back and serve them.”

For more information, follow The Roost Café on Facebook or call 931-467-9474.