“‘Love, Danielle'” is coming to Omaha, Sunday, March 16th! All medical dialogue and actions were fact-checked by a certified genetic counselor and 2 physicians. The film is educational, powerful, heartfelt, funny, and inspirational!
I’ll be there for the screening and will do a post film Q & A. “
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Kari Kawa Harding of Johnny’s Cafe
Omaha, Nebraska.com here with …
Kari Kawa Harding stands in front of the doors of Johnny’s Cafe
Please tell me a little bit about what you did before you became owner and your earlier days here.
Yes. My grandfather started the restaurant in 1922, and then my father and my Uncle Jack took it over in the early ’60s.
So I did grow up being here. Not as much as people think I was, but I do remember driving up to the back and hearing all the mooing, and flies would be everywhere. It smelled awful, but they always said it was the smell of money. I do remember all of that.
I went to a hotel and restaurant management school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Then I worked for Marriott Corporation in California for a couple years, and then I decided to come back and work for the family. My sister Sally also came back, so we both have taken it over now. My uncle has passed away and my father is semi-retired, so Sally and I are both running it now.
The restaurant industry is really hard, and there was a whole lot that happened with COVID. Tell me how you kept going and things you learned that might be good advice to other people.
To be honest, COVID was very, very difficult. We had never seen anything like it. We had gone through recessions. Closing of the interstate. People always wanting to go to the new place. But this was something we’d never seen. We’d never had the government tell us, “You have to close.”
And you still have bills to pay. This is a very big building, so you still have power, water, everything that you just have to keep paying.
We just really put our heads down. And as soon as we were able to open, we did three weeks later. While we were closed, we did “Easter to go” for people and stuff like that, so we did a couple of things here and there. But on the other side of it, we’re known for steaks and prime rib, and that isn’t really what people think of “to go.” And I think also at the time people were so nervous that they didn’t want to pay for high-priced items compared to places that were doing pizza and fast food.
We were very fortunate in that we did receive federal grants that helped us stay open, even though it was a long time coming. We really worked hard and got lean and mean because it was very slow for a very long time, and I think it was a mixture of people being nervous and everything else that was going on.
We did try to think outside the box. We would do huge holiday meals to go for people, like packages for 4, 8, or 12.
We did TV dinners on Friday nights that were chop steak with gravy or chicken fried chicken with chicken gravy which was a big seller.
I think it taught us a lot about how to get lean and mean to sustain, because it took quite a while until things got back to normal. And I think we kind of felt at the time that we’d never seen anything like that, so we thought once we opened, people would be dying to go out. People were very scared, but I think it helped us that we’re a well-known name. We have high ceilings here, and we really spread out tables. We did everything we could to make people feel comfortable. We’re both happy and proud that we survived it.
We’re glad you’re still here. You’re one of my favorite restaurants.
Wonderful.
Interior of Johnny’s Cafe looking out to open front doors with plaques and images showing decade by decade the history of Johnny’s CafePlaque hangs on the wall at Johnny’s Cafe showing historical images of the Cafe and people
I enjoy coming here. The staff is great, the food is great, and I love all the history.
It is fun to see.
Tell me a little bit about your grandpa and how he started it.
He was an immigrant from Poland, so really our last name is Kawalowski. And when he came over, he was around 12 years old. He came with an aunt, and he was just happy to be here. They shortened his last name to Kawa. When I was growing up, people used to think I was Japanese or something, but I was like, “No, I’m from Nebraska.”
My grandfather came to Omaha and he worked a little. During World War I he had a job in a kitchen. Then when he came back to Omaha, he bought a little bar. The name on the bar was “Johnny’s,” and my grandfather’s name was Frank Kawa. The story goes that he didn’t have enough money to change the paint on the building. We’re not even talking neon, we’re talking paint. So he would answer to the name of Johnny and he would sign things “Frank Johnny Kawa.”
It was just a little bar with eight tables. The old pictures show people who have guns on them, and oil lamps are on the walls. It was in South Omaha, which was kind of the Wild West in the ’20s. We didn’t find out until much later that he was a beer runner. He was well known and making a lot of money, and they were after him. Once Prohibition was over, I think he decided to go legit. He decided to really seriously get into food and drink.
As the story goes, Johnny’s just grew. As the stockyards grew, there were so many people around all the time. They were open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And they just kept adding on rooms every which way they could.
They talk about in the ’50s when there was sawdust on the floors and they’d have to hose it out every night because of everything on everyone’s boots. They were open from 6 am to 1 am every day, and they just grew with the stockyards.
My grandfather died in the early ’60s. I never met him, and my mother never met him either. And then my uncle and my father took over the restaurant. And then Sally and I were proud to be part of the next generation, and we took over in the late ’90s.
So this started out as a bar and then it came to this location?
It’s always been on this corner of 27th and L. Probably the really oldest part of it is the corner of 27th and L. There used to be a door right there. If you walked out now you would probably get hit by the cars going by.
I don’t even really know the old walls or anything. I mean, they’ve really changed it around. In the ’70s they changed it to what it is now. And they really did change it a lot. It used to be a lot of little dining rooms and all this stuff. The original part, though, would be the corner of 27th and L, and they just added on.
What’s your capacity here?
For the dining room, full capacity would be 175. The party rooms are 125. And the bar is about 75.
So you can hold anything from date night or just coming here to enjoy the food like I do, to really larger events.
Yes, yes, we do parties. We can do private parties up to 120. We have closed down for private weddings that are over 300. But we also have the booths which everyone loves, so it’s great for date night. And we have the old-school bar, which a lot of people love. They just like to go in there and have a cocktail and pretend they’re in the past.
Right now I’m looking at this beautiful wine area with the stained glass. Could you tell me a little bit about it and the wine that you offer?
This was built in 1971 when they redid the whole restaurant. They really wanted the restaurant to have what they called a “handsome feel” with the red walls, the dark wood, the red leatherback chairs, the wine cellar. They were very much into promoting wine, because they felt it was a good match with beef and prime rib. So they had it built. I believe the person who did the stained glass was from Omaha. They did all the J’s and the grapes. We have wines in there. Our wines range anywhere from $20 to… I think we go up to $180 bottles, but most of it is affordable. We’re here to sell wine and to match. And we want your dinner to be a wonderful experience.
And so we don’t age wine. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to match it with our food. But we do sell wines by the bottle, in the glass, at lunch and dinner.
We do wine tastings twice a month, which are $30 a person. We have different wine people that come in and you taste five wines. Then we do hot and cold appetizers with it.
T-bone shaped arches and forest mural in the background, wide viewT-bone shaped arches and forest mural in the background, closer view of aches
What are some of your favorite foods here and some of the most popular dishes?
I think what got us on the map definitely was our steak and prime rib. Everything is corn-fed beef from the Midwest. We age and hand cut it all here, so we have our own butchers. All of our soups, dressings, gravies, they’re all homemade from scratch, which I think tastes much better. AndI think that puts us on the map because I don’t think a lot of people still do that.
But the menu is well rounded. There are other things. If you don’t want beef, there is seafood, fish, chicken items.
We do a lot of old-school specials at lunch, which we’re kind of known for because a lot of people don’t do that.
We have oxtails on Tuesday. Thursday they do actual roast turkey and dressing, where they’re actually cooking whole turkeys.
Every Thursday?
Every Thursday at lunch.
Wow.
Turkey and dressing. And then I think my favorite is the tenderloins. I do like petite filet or chateaubriand. I think the prime rib is always wonderful. We slow roast it.
We do fresh salmon. We do a sea bass at night with a lemon piccata sauce, which is wonderful.
And we also do old-school four-piece fried chicken, which you’d be surprised how much we sell, because people like that. We also do chicken that is more heart healthy, like a ginger chicken, which is a chicken breast marinated in ginger and soy sauce and grilled.
So we try to have a little bit for everyone.
And then also our desserts are homemade, too. I forgot to say that.
Oh, wow. Tell me a little about your desserts.
We have a pretty large dessert menu. We have creme brulee. We have bread pudding served warm with a Jack Daniel cream sauce.
We have a warm apple crisp served with a scoop of ice cream.
We have apple, cherry, and pecan pie at all times. We also have plain cheesecake or Oreo cheesecake. So there’s quite an array of desserts, and they’re all homemade.
And then we don’t always have it, but once in a while he does make homemade carrot cake, which people go crazy for.
Any favorite memory stories from when you were little or now?
I do always remember that when I was little, like, we would drive up, and being girls, I think we would always tell our dad, “Oh, my gosh, it smells terrible. And all these cows are mooing, and there’s flies everywhere.” And he would always tell us it was a smell of money, which I think is what every cowboy and rancher in Nebraska would say.
I do remember in the ’80s, the stockyards were still open, but barely, and a cow got loose and was running down L Street. No one could decide exactly what to do. So the police are out there, the Humane Society is out there.
Door
Door
The cow started coming toward Johnny’s, and they were afraid it was going to hit the big front doors, and they didn’t want it to ruin anything. The police and the Humane Society couldn’t decide what to do. So my uncle took serving trays and threw them as Frisbees to the cow to get it away from Johnny’s. The story actually made USA Today.
Oh, wow. I was thinking, this is a bad direction for the cow to run.
It is. It is. It might be served.
How did the stockyards change everything when they went away?
The amount of people in this neighborhood had slowly been dwindling for quite a while after they decided to get rid of the stockyards.
They really thought seriously about moving Johnny’s, like, maybe out west. And I think they just decided it was a historical place and they should stay where they are.
We’ve seen a lot of transitioning in south Omaha, both bad and good, but we’re proud to always be, like, one of the footholds that was always here. So that was very hard.
The stock yards were dwindling, and by the time they closed, they had been gone for quite a few years because there was hardly anything going on there, and there were not many people going through. And right around the same time, the Interstate was closed for a couple years as they redid everything around us.
So it was a hard time in that you really had to know Omaha, how to get into here, because you had to come the back way. This was before GPS and before you could talk to your phone about how to get here. After they finished the Interstate, they did make us a cement island. People are very scared to take the frontage road because they’re afraid they’re getting on the interstate. We used to spend so much time on the phone telling people how to get in here.
That was my concern the first time I came here, and the second and the third time, and then I got used to it.
We would be on the phone all the time telling people, “You’re not gonna get on the Interstate. It’ll take you in.” So that did make it easier when there was GPS and people understood that. But still to this day, on big weekends like Berkshire when there’s a lot of people out of town, there’s people who ask, “How do I get in there?”
But you don’t really have a choice when you’re dealing with Nebraska roads: they do what they want to do.
Today, GPS took me because I was in a different location. It was like a historical journey almost to get here. And it’s a real testimony to your resilience and being able to pivot but still keep the core value and the core wonderfulness of what’s Johnny’s.
South Omaha has always been where the immigrants go. And really, the packing plant jobs pay great money, so there’s always been a melting pot around us. It has changed over the years but it works to our benefit, too, because those are people that want to work and want a job.
Is there a question you wish I would have asked that I didn’t or something people don’t know about Johnny’s that you’d like them to know?
Steak for lunch with scalloped potatoes, salad and broccoli and cauliflower
I don’t think a lot of people realize that we’re open for lunches Tuesday through Friday. Our lunches range from $11 to $24, but you can get a soup, a meal, a roll, a potato for $15, and it’s cooked to order. It’s homemade. That’s almost the same price as fast food. I don’t think people realize that and that we do have more than just beef at lunch.
Something for people to keep in mind is that we will be open for both Easter and Mother’s Day. We do a limited menu from 11:30 to 2:30 on both days, even though usually we’re closed on Sundays. I think we’re a nice choice for Easter or Mother’s Day if you don’t want to cook.
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Coneflower Creamery Owners, Brian Langbehn and Katie Arant Chapman, Part Two
Brian Langbehn and Katie Arant Chapman smiling inside Coneflower Creamery
And now …
Brian Langbehn: The third shop in Old Town Elkhorn … is projected for mid to end of April, 2025.
Please make sure to invite me. I’d love to come.
Brian Langbehn: Oh, yeah, for sure.
This [Millwork] area has been really exciting to watch the development over time.
Brian Langbehn: Yeah.
Then there’s kind of a debate onto what this area is called.
Brian Langbehn: There is a little bit, definitely.
I mean, and when we came here, I think the original, the ultimate goal was to have a big enough kitchen space so that we could produce everything for all the shops.
What we really wanted to do was have kind of the central production facility that could supply up to three shops.
Now with that control of the quality and that consistency and efficiency that we get out of one kitchen.
So that was the main focus. But we’ve been really pleasantly surprised as to the foot traffic we’re getting at this Millwork location, as well.
As things develop around here, it’s becoming really, really busy.
Brian Langbehn and Katie Arant Chapman smiling inside Coneflower Creamery
How did you find out about Millwork? How long did it take to build out?
Brian Langbehn: We had looked a long time ago.
Katie Arant Chapman: We looked six years ago. We looked way pre-COVID at Millwork. It was totally gutted. I mean, the dock looked nothing like it looks now.
…
Brian Langbehn: And then all the work they have to do, and there really wasn’t the momentum happening down here. It was just like, okay, I could kind of see it, but we thought it was too …
Katie Arant Chapman: … A little too far off the beaten path. Yeah, found a good space that was right for whatever you wanted to do.
Brian Langbehn: We did like being next to the baseball stadium.
We could feel that there was opportunity in this area, but we were just a little early.
Katie Arant Chapman: We reopened Millwork as an option. We said, okay, well, let’s go look at it again. That was probably a tour three years later after seeing it for the first time.
But we still hadn’t found the spot that we wanted to go into, so we said, we’ll look at Millwork again.
We built it out at the tail end of COVID. What I found, I don’t know how you feel about it, Brian, but I have found that I feel like Elkhorn is moving so quickly, and they’re built out because this was a really big space.
There were historical issues to deal with, given that it’s a historic building.
And then just with all the COVID delays, I mean, it was over a year of build out, I’m sure.
Brian Langbehn: Yeah. Millwork took a long time because of the supply chain issues, just the availability of the regular construction products.
So, this Elkhorn is going much faster now. Now that things are kind of opened up a little bit.
This one definitely took a long time. We love being down here. We’re so glad. We kind of like, you know, Dolomiti – Best pizza, Archetype. -Best coffee, Kros Strain – best beer. We Just feel like it’s a great little.
It’s amazing. The little treasures.
Katie Arant Chapman: Yeah.
Of things right here.
Brian Langbehn: Right, right. Now, there is a lot of momentum. There’s stuff happening here, and that the whole block.
The Dizzy Mule project, is like that whole block to the south of us here that’s taking off.
And as the Riverfront develops with the park and the Luminarium, the museum, there’s a lot of really exciting things happening down by us here.
Not to mention the baseball stadium and summer College World Series.
Brian Langbehn: There’s a lot happening.
And it’s neat to see, like, an ecosystem kind of develop right in this area.
Katie Arant Chapman: Yeah.
Which a lot of other build outs I’ve seen in other places don’t seem to be that interested in the ecosystem of business and residential.
Brian Langbehn: Right. It’s much more cohesive down here where there’s a vision of what they want this area to be. I think we’re here early to that vision.
But it’s exciting because now it’s starting to fill in around us, and to get established before is really important because they’ll be like, oh, we can go to Coneflower.
It’s kind of nice to get that first. No, we weren’t first, but one of the first ones down here.
I think we were talking earlier about how special ice cream itself is.
So tell me a little bit more about that and your favorite flavors and maybe some of your more unusual flavors.
And then, of course, nothing wrong with old favorites at the end, so people can have a list of things to wonder about when they do this and want to go try.
Brian Langbehn: Yeah. Do you want to go first, Katie?
Katie Arant Chapman: Yeah. I mean, for me, I am just in general, I’m an incredibly nostalgic person and nostalgic eater specifically.
If I’m taking a pint home, it probably will be the cookies and cream, but the flavors that I’m really proud of here that are a little bit different, probably the brown butter almond brittle is a really comforting … It’s not a classic, but it has like some classic elements to it. The warmth, the brown butter and the nuttiness of the almond toffee I really love.
We do a … I mentioned the saffron and roasted white chocolate has been a really fun one to do that resonates with a lot of people.
Trying to think of one else that I just can’t get enough of.
Brian Langbehn: There’s so many.
Katie Arant Chapman: Honeycomb is one of my all-time favorites too, that we actually just started doing in the last two years.
But we make a honeycomb candy with local honeycomb and swirl that through a vanilla base.
It’s called Hokey Pokey in other parts of the world.
But that’s a really fun kind of like classic to other.
It’s very classic in Canada. Classic to other parts of the world. It’s really delicious. And then the thing that gets me, gives me a little pep in my step all the time is the seasonal stuff.
Christmas, we have an amazing Christmas list of flavors and then we get to move right into Valentine’s Day and do all the really fudgy, rich, decadent flavors.
Now we’re just past that, so we’re doing some Mardi Gras stuff.
We have a Bananas Foster and King cake ice cream. And then we get to roll right into St. Patty’s Day and do chocolate mint and Irish coffee and things like that.
And then after that, it’ll be the first little bits of little hints of spring and then College World Series flavors.
There’s just always something new going on. It’s just fun.
What are you thinking of for College World Series flavors?
Katie Arant Chapman: So for College World Series, traditionally we have three flavors.
We have a Big League Chew, which is bubblegum. And we actually make that naturally by combining vanilla, lemon, orange and banana.
If you combine those in a certain combination, you without a doubt hit bubble gum.
Brian Langbehn: It’s incredible.
Katie Arant Chapman: So we do Big League Chew. We do a spicy Cracker Jack, which is a buttered popcorn base with a sriracha caramel and cayenne peanuts.
It’s really fun.
And then we also do a malted milk chocolate, which is kind of an homage to those little malted milk Goodrich cups that you get at the stadium with the wooden spoon.
The tough thing is, we have so many classics that people look forward to every year.
We look forward to making them, balancing that with being innovative.
And we only have so many slots in the freezer up here when we’re keeping ice cream.
Brian Langbehn: So, yeah, if you don’t make the favorites, you would definitely hear about it.
But we always like to try to, you know, innovate and create as well.
So, yeah, that’s a balance.
Katie Arant Chapman: I think we’ll want to get together this year and, like, figure out something new to add to the CWS roster. But it is always a challenge to fit everything into the ice cream case.
Your turn.
Brian Langbehn: I guess for nostalgia one of the things, some earlier memories for me, if we would make ice cream at home that was, like, a really special occasion usually, or it was just something that was not regularly done, but it would be really special, and it would be the little canister that we throw in the freezer. We usually would just make vanilla, but it would be gone within two days, and it was just unlike anything you could get at the store. And it always blew my mind. And so those are some of my, earliest memories of ice cream.
I think trying to tap into that feeling of ice cream is special when you make it, and when we can make our own flavors, try to get that feel of it’s not just from the store. It’s like, there’s a lot going into it and using those good ingredients
For flavors. I’ve got a lot of. Some of the seasonal ones are really. When we work with local farmers, we’ll get some.
But, yeah, some of our seasonal flavors, in the summer we’ve got an abundance of fresh, local ingredients that we have access to, and our farmers are growing for us.
Some of the ones, like black raspberries, if we can find them, you know, we do a black raspberry crisp.
There’s a black walnut ice cream is one of my personal favorites.
It’s just very unique, but very Midwest, very flavorful.
But at the end of the day, I’m always like Katie. There’s that nostalgia. I’ll get the vanilla with some of our homemade hot fudge with some nuts, and it’s the best thing ever.
I just love it so much. So that’s usually one of my goto’s. But yeah, we have a lot of really fun flavors. We do a strawberry ice cream where we actually take our whole staff and we hand pick the strawberries that go into that ice cream.
It’s just kind of a fun thing that we do every year, a tradition.
We only make that strawberry ice cream when the strawberries are in season.
And it’s kind of a fun. There’s nothing more fresh, nothing more, you know, nothing better than that at that time.
And when it’s gone, it’s gone. And so, yeah, it’s about second, second or third week in June.
Usually, we can start picking that first week if the weather is okay, and then by the second or third week, we’ll have the ice cream.
It’s a tradition and we kind of get a team together, we go eat breakfast together, and then we go hit the fields early enough, hopefully before it gets too hot in the day.
And we pick as much as we can, and then that’s what we use to make that year’s batch of strawberry ice cream.
So really special, fun,
Wonderful things you’re doing to what everyone has as an old favorite.
You told me a little bit about your classic flavors that you always keep… Any more you want to add in terms of classics?
Brian Langbehn: What’s normally or we try to have available every day would be our Vanilla Bean.
Not necessarily. They can sell out from time to time, but we try to make them all the time.
There are exceptions, but the Vanilla Bean, our dark chocolate, the archetype coffee.
I haven’t tried that one.
Katie Arant Chapman: Oh, it’s good.
Brian Langbehn: Cookies and cream. When we have them again, this is not like set in stone, but we do make that quite often.
The Blackstone Butter Brickle. That’s our tart cherry crumble and grandma mini lemon bar.
Brian Langbehn: Yes…
Katie Arant Chapman: Those are kind of our core flavor s…
Brian Langbehn: … so lots of different choices, but yeah.
What are you planning in the Elkhorn location?
Katie Arant Chapman: So Elkhorn will be slightly less seating than Millwork.
More seating than Blackstone. It’s kind of in between those two in terms of square footage on the customer’s side.
The ice creams, we’ll try to keep. I mean, even between Blackstone and Millwork right now, we try to keep them as similar as possible.
Whatever we’re scooping in Millwork, we also like to be scooping in Blackstone as well.
So that will hold true for Elkhorn as well as best we can.
It’s always gonna feel a little different, but yeah, I mean, we’re really hoping to kind of recreate some of that … the organic elements that you see in our Blackstone or Millwork shop, like the brick and the cool tile and things like that, we’re trying to infuse into the space out in Elkhorn, too.
So we’re really excited about it. It’s gonna be cute.
I am, too. Three locations. It’s fantastic. And so similar ideas between each of the locations where you’re there at a really cool time for growth and excitement in the neighborhood.
It’s amazing timing.
Brian Langbehn: Yeah. I think we’ve been really fortunate to get in where we have and when we have.
Katie Arant Chapman: And we didn’t try to jump into anything too soon, you know, after Blackstone.
We looked at a lot of spaces all over town, and it took a long time to kind of land on this.
And, you know, Elkhorn has kind of come sooner, but.
Well, and we’ve kind of looked. We always kind of had our eye on west, but it took a long time to kind of really see where we would fit in.
Well, the best. And we found the one in Elkhorn. It was like, oh, yeah, this feels like a Coneflower.
Like, should be here. It has the same kind of, like, a nice community of local businesses.
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Coneflower Creamery Owners, Brian Langbehn and Katie Arant Chapman
Brian Langbehn and Katie Arant Chapman smiling behind the ice cream case with menu and signage in background of Coneflower Creamery
OmahaNebraska.com here with …
Brian Langbehn and Katie Arant Chapman.
Brian, please tell me a little bit about yourself and your background right up until you start the business.
Brian Langbehn
Brian Langbehn: Okay. So I went to University of Nebraska in Lincoln, got a business degree, and actually did that for a few years.
Found out it really wasn’t my calling, my passion. Decided to change gears completely. Went to culinary school. I went to a school in Chicago called the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago.
Just wanted to get out of Omaha for a while, and so I went to school there.
Worked a few jobs while I was studying. Didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I was definitely more interested in desserts and the sweet side of things.
Sugar.
And so, I actually found a job while I was there in Chicago.
I saw … I was reading a Bon Appetit magazine … and saw a place that they were talking about in Chicago that was kind of one of the hot spots at the time.
It was called Sugar. It was a dessert nightclub. Really interesting concept, and so that appealed to me.
I went there, just out of the blue, and said, “Are you hiring?”
And fortunately, the day before, somebody had put in their notice, and they said, come in next week.
I kind of fell into that. It was great. I didn’t really realize at the time, but the chef there was really talented, and she was actually the Pastry Chef of the Year that year, 2005.
I kind of fell into this really exciting job and learned from someone that was kind of my, you know, a mentor to me at that time for pastries and things.
So worked there while I was in school. [I] came back to Omaha, and then, I hadn’t had a tremendous background in cooking, so I immersed myself in restaurants.
I was baking. I was doing catering. I was doing whatever I could do, various restaurants, to just get the skills and start working in the industry.
Along the way, I met someone that was working at the 801 Chop House, and he said, “Hey, we’ve got a pastry opening down here.”
I went, applied, got a job there as their pastry [chef].
And then, yep, I’m back in Omaha. Then took a kind of an interesting path. I was pastry chef and worked my way up to executive chef at that restaurant.
And then it was at that time when I met Katie. When I was executive [chef], I was like, we need somebody on pastry.
And we hired Katie, and she was looking for a pastry job.
So, you both have the pastry background.
Brian Langbehn: Yep. So, anyway, I guess I’ll continue with my story, but hers kind of definitely will meet with it.
Yeah, but so, you know, after 801, I again, kind of found myself in a position where I was wanting to do something different and the time was right. Blackstone, the neighborhood, was really starting to take off, and I had noticed an empty bay there. If we were going to do it, that would be a really hot spot, I thought.
You sure picked it well. I’ve never had not had a line.
Brian Langbehn: Right. And so that kind of led me to thinking, okay, if I’m going to do it, the time is now.
I was in between jobs at the moment. I called Katie late one night and left her a message saying, I found this perfect spot. We had kind of talked about an idea about this, and if we’re going to do it, I’m not gonna do it unless it’s you and that you’re a part of what we’re doing, because I know we can do it and do it successfully.
Yeah. So then she came back, and I’ll maybe let her. You’ll never guess …
Katie Arant Chapman
Katie Arant Chapman: I went to culinary school pretty close out of high school.
I did one semester at UNO. Realized it wasn’t the path for me, and I switched over to culinary school, and I went to Metro here in Omaha. Did that for three years, and simultaneously worked in restaurants around the cities.
I worked at Vivace and M’s Pub back when they were kind of more connected.
We worked at the Voltaire, Jones Brothers Cupcakes for a little while, just trying to get as much experience as I could.
It was while I was at Vivace and M’s Pub that another cook came up to me and said, “Hey, I also work at 801 Chop House, and there’s, you know, they’re looking for a pastry chef.”
I went over, met with Brian. We hit it off. And then I ended up working as the pastry chef at 801 for a year. And then it was kind of just, you know, I was like. I was really young, starting to feel antsy, kind of feeling like I wanted to work in a larger pastry market.
I wanted to work on a big pastry team with a lot of people.
And at that time in Omaha, it was mostly like a restaurant had one pastry cook or one pastry chef.
I ended up moving out to Napa Valley in California and worked out there for three years.
I started at Bottega in Yountville and then moved to Bouchon and Bouchon Bakery within the Thomas Restaurant group out there in Yountville as well, and was really enjoying California.
Katie Arant Chapman: When I had been at 801, Brian and I used to talk a lot about ice cream.
And we both just have kind of this, like, nostalgic pull and this nostalgic tie to ice cream and what it means for people.
And, we always say, you eat it when you’re happy, you eat it when you’re sad, when you’re celebrating someone broke up with you.
It’s just kind of … It’s just everybody has … We feel like everybody has kind of this, like, nostalgic feeling when it comes to ice cream.
We would talk a lot about that. We talked. Talk a lot about how cool it would be to someday do ice cream to the full extent and to the way that we really wanted to with, like, fresh homemade sauces and stuff like that.
So that was …, those were great conversations that we would have, but then [I] moved to California.
It was when I got the call from him that I kind of.
I knew what it was going to be because I hadn’t heard from him in three years.
Katie Arant Chapman: And he called me and said, oh, no, I’m gonna be tempted to come back to Omaha.
Brian Langbehn: (joking) What does he want?
Katie Arant Chapman: So what does he want? So anyway, so, yeah, so I finished out my time there and headed back here in the summer of 2016, which is kind of as the shop was gearing up.
The shop was in Blackstone, was mostly built out by the time I got to town.
I got to town probably about a month before we opened the doors.
Was it cold?
Katie Arant Chapman: It was July. So, no, it was, yes, an easy transition.
I’ve met a lot of people who’ve come here from California, and, of course, the weather is difficult for them to get used to.
Katie Arant Chapman: Yeah, yeah.
We moved here the first time during the blizzard, which they’re not supposed to move you.
Brian Langbehn: Oh, my gosh.
So it was, bring in the chair, shovel out the garage, bring in the couch, shovel out the garage.
Welcome to Nebraska.
But we fell in love with Nebraska. The people here, we always joke it wasn’t the weather, but the people here are just amazing.
We’re very glad you both are here in Coneflower. Now we get to the extra fun part. How does Coneflower start?
Brian Langbehn: I mean, so we. Katie came back, right? And we were gonna open the doors. The plan was not to open after summer. We had, there have been delays in construction, of course, and things that beyond our control.
We actually opened at the end of August. The beginning of September, really.
Kids are back in school. Summer is kind of over at this point. But I think for us there was … because there was some of that delay. It kind of helped with the hype and the buzz was out there and people were really anticipating.
When we did open the doors finally, I felt like there was a tremendous response kind of right from the get-go. We were just doing something like Katie said, …we weren’t reinventing the wheel, but we had a focus on ingredients, we had a focus on local, we had a focus on the techniques that we had learned in making all the mix ins.
We came up with the waffle cone recipe. She designed the cookie recipe.
There’s things that we just, we said, if we’re gonna have it, we’re gonna try to make it.
It was an approach that was kind of unique to Omaha, I think, at the time.
And there was just a lot of excitement and …
Katie Arant Chapman: … well, we wanted to toe the line between having cookies and cream and chocolate. Just doing it really, really well. You know, cookies and cream was my favorite flavor when I was a kid.
Doing those really classic flavors really well and elevated, but then also doing saffron and roasted white chocolate, or things that people don’t typically see in ice cream for.
So we feel like we still. We’re always trying to balance the case, balance the ice cream cabinet with, you got your chocolate chip cookie dough and you’ve got your black sesame brûlée.
That’s important for us.
Brian Langbehn: Right. We wanted to make sure that every flavor in the case was not only something we were proud of, but it could be somebody’s favorite, but they’re all unique, so having that 20 or 20 some options that are all appealing to someone was a big part of what we were doing.
Yeah, it’s just been kind of a whirlwind since then.
We’ve kind of gotten a reputation for these long lines.
We wanted to make waiting in line kind of fun and an experience and something that people were willing to do based on the exciting flavors and the service that we were giving.
And I think we accomplished that.
Katie Arant Chapman: We want to make sure that we’re all moving really fast, scooping as quickly as we can.
But if you’ve waited in line, that you get your time in front of the case in front of the ice cream cabinet, and that anything you want to sample, any questions you have, you know, we want you to feel like it’s your time to really take a breath and try everything.
Brian Langbehn: Yeah, it’s not rushed, but it’s…
Katie Arant Chapman: We’re rushed
… Rushed where it needs to be rushed.
But you still have great customer experience.
Brian Langbehn: Exactly. We wanted the feeling of, like, oh, I can take all these flavors in and I can try them, and we can learn about them, but still being. Keeping people moving. So that’s our goal always.
So you have the first location in Blackstone about 2016.
Then you came here to Millwork …
Coneflower Creamery location at the Ashton building in Millwork Commons
Katie Arant Chapman: … in 2023.
Visit back for Part Two and of course visit this great ice cream restaurant!
Coneflower Creamery Locations:
Coneflower Creamery – Blackstone
3921 Farnam Street
Blackstone District
Omaha, NE 68131
402.913.2399
From our friends at Rescue and Reuse:
”
We are hosting four durable medical equipment collection and rehome events in Lincoln, Scottsbluff, Omaha and Kearney in 2024-2025 to recycle/rehome equipment, diverting it from the landfill and to assist persons with disabilities and their families by providing an accessible and cost-effective option to recycle/rehome.
If you have questions about these events, please contact Executive Director Kimberly Carroll Steward at director@nrcne.org .
Omaha Rescue and Reuse Event:
Equipment Drop-off Days:
Tuesday & Wednesday, April 8-9 (12-5 pm)
Thursday, April 10 (12-7 pm)
Friday, April 11 (8 am-noon)
Equipment Rehome Day:
Saturday, April 12, 2025 from 8 am-1 pm
Event Location: 8111 Dodge Street, Suite 141, Omaha, NE
Need moving assistance for equipment donations in the Omaha area?
”
Don’t miss Pączki Day!! It’s time for the annual event across the country to celebrate Mardi Gras but Polish style.
Pączki is pronounced “punch key” and is the plural of pączek which is pronounced “punch ek”.
Still wondering what it is? It’s a fantastic fried donut with fruit filling and drenched in sugar.
Enjoy these sugary fruit filled Polish donuts on Sunday 2 March from Noon – 3 PM.
This event will have these special treats before the Lenten fasts begins. Traditionally, these are eaten and enjoyed on Fat Tuesday, the last day for such indulgences for many. The Wednesday after is called Ash Wednesday and begins Lent for many Christians.
Don’t miss out on this and other Polish foods including:
Pierogi
Sausage
Cabbage Rolls
Potato Soup
Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant,One of My Favorite Omaha Restaurants
As much as I loved the previous owners at Lalibela, I am pleased to announce that there are new owners (Sibaht and Senite Gebremichael) and the restaurant is in good hands. The new owners took over last Friday.
Today, I went there for lunch to have my favorite, Gored Gored. This is a tasty meat dish with special spices on a wonderful spongy bread. The bread is called injera and is made from teff flour.
I had a wonderful meal and time.
Thank you Sibaht and Senite!
Visit for yourself and enjoy!
Please share!
Lalibela Restaurant
4422 Cass St.
Omaha, NE 68131
(402) 991-5662
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Dale Gubbels, Director of Business Development for Firstar Fiber
Dale Gubbels holding cleaned material to be melted
OmahaNebraska.com is here today with …
Dale Gubbels and I am the business development director at Firstar Fiber.
How long have you been here?
Firstar was formed in 1998 and we moved into this property in 2005 and we’ve been here ever since.
What part of town were you in before?
Actually, we started out in Fremont. We went through a couple growth spurts. So when we moved to … grew out of Omaha. That was actually pretty quickly because we had a customer based here in Omaha and they asked if we would move in and share a building with them. They were a document destruction company and it was a pretty good fit.
And then we outgrew that building, then we outgrew another building.
And then this building is just right.
What did you do before?
I have been involved in recycling since the early 1980s and I worked at one point for the Nebraska Department of Environmental Control, which has also gone through several name changes.
I was the public information officer and one of my assignments when I worked for the agency was to help the division that was just starting up in recycling to help with their education programs and so forth.
So I got involved more and more in recycling. And then in 1982? … I think it was … the Nebraska Recycling Association was formed. It was a non-profit group to advocate for recycling. I became its first executive director and ran that for probably about eight years or so.
Then I was recruited by a Canadian company that was opening an office for a consulting operation back East. I took a job with them, moved the family to Connecticut and we lived in Connecticut for about 10 years.
Then the group that I ran in Nebraska, the Nebraska Recycling Association, got a grant. They asked if I would be willing to do a study on how to bring about an in-state recycling market. And long story short, that the idea was to try to build a paper mill.
We found a Italian company that claimed that they could sell us a paper mill and it would only be about $10 to $15 million, which is a lot of money. It would turn out 10 to 15 tons a day of toilet paper.
We said that’s what we’ll bring to Nebraska. And long story short, by the time we got through the last engineering study, the last marketing study (where you look at, okay, you have to make enough in order to justify your investment) you have to meet environmental standards that apparently that operation wasn’t having to meet in selling into Africa and other developing countries.
The last quote was for a much larger facility. It was going to be, I want to say, about 100 tons a day, but it ramped up to about $90 million. So we pivoted it to just concentrate on the initial stage of collecting it and processing it. And by that I meant we would sort it, bale it, and ship it off to paper mills.
So Firstar has kind of grown from those early days.
Glass recycling, I know, is been a difficult thing and I wish there’d be some great new technology that came up, but I don’t know, has there been? I haven’t researched it in several years.
Yeah, the biggest challenge with glass is that it’s made from sand. So you’re always using the lowest, you know, it’s sand.
So you’re always going to be fighting that cost issue between you and …
Exactly.
Okay, I was really hoping like some thing would have appeared to solve this.
The closest that I ever came across and unfortunately it’s never really panned out because again, sand. They were using it in some forms of drywall as a way to mitigate against mold. It didn’t really go anywhere either.
Tell me a little bit about what you do here.
Well, I turned over my responsibilities as CEO to Patrick about – well, he started October two years ago this past year, and I stayed on to hand off more and more of my responsibilities. But he actually learned them pretty quickly. And we started this plastic operation. And so my role as business development director is to try to find new ways to market the plastics like the sheeting. I found that company out in Wyoming that is making plastic sheeting and boats … I managed to get an organization that is funded by the various brands who want to see their packaging recycled.
I got Firstar a grant to trial the use of these pellets that you saw tonight.
Is this the initiatives they have at the different schools for some of the materials project?
Project School Board was one that I started … we got a donation from Reynolds and we gave the high schools that have shop classes some boards and they made a variety of things.
So the school sent you materials, you turn them into boards and gave them back to the schools.
That is really cool.
Yeah. So that’s pretty much what I do. So let’s try to find those connections.
That’s pretty amazing. How did you end up with the Hawaiian fishnets?
They learned of us through an industry group that we had worked with to develop a lot of this out here.
They were looking for ideas and how to do something with the nets other than to send it to a waste to energy plant, a burn plant.
They didn’t like that. So they’ve been looking for some time to try to find what’s an alternative that could be actually turned into something that the Hawaiians could use as well. They’d rather keep everything in Hawaii rather than add the extra cost and the carbon footprint shipping it.
This effort is not a long term effort to do in Nebraska by any stretch … Well, they reached out to us because they wanted to learn more about the lumber and they hired me to do some consulting for them.
I’ve been advising Dr. [Jennifer] Lynch and Mafalda [Gentil Martins Seiz de Freitas] , … She was doing some of the fishnet recovery in Portugal and the Hawaiians managed to snap her up. She’s running that program for Dr. Lynch. I’m not sure if it’s going to be plastic lumber, plastic sheeting … But the idea that they need more than anything is just to get the Hawaiians excited about doing this.
So the idea behind the boards, I said, let’s make some boards for you. You can take those around dog and pony show. And you can tell this is one thing that’s been done with it.
But Hawaii has some huge problems in terms of it’s an island state. “Islands” state is a better way to say it because there’s seven islands. When you get right down to it, transportation between them is tough. It’s no more populated than Nebraska. In fact, it’s harder in many ways because they’re stretched out. It makes it very difficult for any economic answer to any of their problems.
And tourism is their lifeblood, that and the Navy and Army. But with the tourism industry you’re bringing in, and I have no idea, but I’m just going to venture, probably millions of people a year. And that’s waste. That’s waste. That’s waste as well.
So the tourists come in and now we have a new source of waste.
Not just everyday waste, because people don’t take it home with them.
What do you think will be in the direction of solutions for Hawaii and other places? Because your facility is amazing and it’s huge.
But it’s a drop in the bucket. It can’t be everywhere. No, no. And I believe the solution is anything that’s made from plastic, like this table, that table, probably parts of your chair, all these things should be utilizing some form of recycled plastics.
I know there are a lot of people who rather see it go back into a bottle or into a sandwich bag or into potato bag, all those things. Wonderful. That’d be great, but people don’t realize just how problematic that is because we can never get it clean enough. On top of that, you’re introducing so many different types of resin and all the…
Yes, the toxicity would be hard to…
That’s why it’s – There is legislation that they’re trying to force the brands to make packaging with at least 30% recycled plastic in it and they’re struggling. Struggling mightily because it is such a challenge.
How did they come up with 30%?Even knowing nothing- it’s a big number.
Oh, it’s a huge number.
And so there needs to be technological solutions on the horizon or an incentive for a technological solution…
… Why they came up with 30%, I couldn’t tell you … It’s state by state. California, Washington state, New York. A lot of places have it.
What do you think would be good legislation here [ in Nebraska] ?
Well, I believe we have to get the brands excited about helping Nebraskans solve their problem. Instead of mandating that, you got to put it back in your package.
No, we’re okay with that [not requiring it go into packages]. Anything that it isn’t going to cause a problem for you, such as, maybe a pallet, or maybe boards, or things that can tolerate a lot of different levels of contamination and heterogeneous mixes and all that, that’s what we want you to do.
What would you like to see anything more for the legislation and then going forward for your company for legislation?
These other states, Colorado, now Minnesota, have passed what’s called extended producer responsibility. The producers that they’re referring to are the brands themselves. And the responsibility is help us develop the infrastructure to collect, process and turn this material back into a product that we can have a sustainable program. So, that’s my aim right now.
Right now there is legislation that has got four parts to it. It’s just a beginning part where the expectation would be. Colorado and Minnesota and California, Portland, they have required that the brands form non-profit organizations that take responsibility.
If you’re General Mills, if you’re Nestle, if you’re Heinz, whomever, if you’re selling into that state packaging, you pay into this nonprofit. That nonprofit will help the municipalities develop a coherent program to get it collected.
That nonprofit will also invest in businesses to process it into new materials and that is something that is going to take a while for Nebraska to do. This bill that’s down there right now is requiring the battery industry to take the first leap into this because batteries are such a safety issue, for not just us, but for everyone. I mean, if your cell phone was attacked by a dog and start chewing on it. It could start a fire. Just about everything that is electronic anymore has a battery in it, a lithium battery.
And I’m sure you sitting on one right now.
So if it passes in the Legislature, they will be required to develop a recovery system here in Nebraska for our lithium batteries. But because people can’t tell the difference between lithium batteries and any other batteries, they’re to be responsible for collecting and disposing of, or recycling, all forms of batteries.
So, the batteries would be separated at some point because …
… the onus will fall off on the industry itself to figure out how to make it convenient for people. You can’t put a battery in your recycling bin because we have no way of getting it out. They’re going to have to come up with some pretty ingenious ways to incentivize people.
This bill is one element that hopefully will come about first, and as people learn more about it. Why should we, as the consumer, be responsible for everything? The people selling it – we need them to be thinking, you know, from …
… cradle to grave, so to speakand that would hopefully spur some innovation on the front side of things. So there’s less left on the waste side …
Exactly, yeah. And to answer the second part of your question, my hope is that innovation companies like Firstar can be part of the solution, too, but someone else has to help us with that because they have far more R and D available to them than what we do.
