The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Normand Coles is one of the many regulars at Bobbie's Coffee Shop. Coles has been coming to the diner for 10 years.

Bobbi's serves up inspiration

By Justin Berton

The man in cowboy boots sat in Bobbi's Coffee Shop on De Anza Boulevard in Cupertino every day for five years and ordered the same thing: two eggs over easy, side of bacon, wheat toast.

He would sit in waitress Pam Inman's section each day and peek over the top of his newspaper when he thought Pam wasn't looking.

Pam got to know him pretty well; Bobbi's is that kind of place.

One day he came in all dressed up in his best duds and pulled her to the side of the dinner counter. He asked if she would like to go to the movies with him. Pam agreed, even though she felt odd dating a customer, and had a miserable time.

The man in cowboy boots forgot his wallet, mooched $20 from Pam and never showed his face in Bobbi's again. "I wasn't going to call him," Pam said. "I just wasn't raised that way."

All the regulars in the coffee shop razzed Pam, their beloved waitress of 18 years who never forgot a birthday or an anniversary, and said the man in cowboy boots did not deserve a woman like her.

"We have decided," owner Sally Carpenter said, "that if she ever leaves, we'll just tell people she died, because everybody would go with her and there would be no restaurant."

When Carpenter and friend Kathleen Reeser bought the 29-year-old coffee shop in 1995--they learned quickly how to be successful at Bobbi's: Don't change a thing.

"We lost a few regulars who were loyal to Bobbi," Carpenter said. "But we won over a few, too."

There is still Normand, the gravelly voiced cowboy who sits at the counter and orders the Irishman breakfast. He returns each afternoon to get free coffee refills. When Bobbi's closed for three days to install new ovens and stoves, Normand meandered by very slowly until Carpenter invited him in to the shut-down diner for his regular cup of coffee.

There were two young men who sat in a booth in the back each morning and planned big plans and dreamed big dreams over hot plates of eggs and steaming cups of coffee. They stopped dropping by after their business, Apple Computers, took off.

Now, with a few years under their belts, Carpenter and Reeser feel comfortable opening up the menu but just a bit.

"You can't find cappuccino or vanilla coffee on our menu," Carpenter said. "Just plain good food."

When their head cook of 27 years, Don McKercher, goes on vacation, they announce it on the specials board: "Chef Dunee is on vacation. Be patient with us. If that doesn't work for you, go to Denny's." Few actually do.

And it's a good thing the man in cowboy boots finally returned.

What the regulars did not know--and neither did Pam--was that the man in cowboy boots stopped joining the regulars for breakfast because he thought Pam didn't work there anymore.

Each time he drove by, he didn't see her car in the parking lot. What the man in cowboy boots did not know--but all the regulars and Pam did--was that Pam wrecked her car in an accident and couldn't drive it to work.

Everybody in the coffee shop agreed that was a fair excuse and encouraged Pam to give him another chance. The waitress and the man in cowboy boots are now happily married.

Bobbi's is just that kinda place.

Bobbi's Coffee Shop, 1361 S. De Anza Blvd., 257-4040.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, May 20, 1998.
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