Olivia and Jacob Losby stand in front of the order counter of the Old Town Cafe in Joseph on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. The couple is closing the business Oct. 3 after having owned and operated it for eight years.

JOSEPH — A longtime presence on Joseph’s Main Street is “turning a page” Oct. 3, as that day, owners Jacob and Olivia Losby close the Old Town Café for the last time.

The Losbys sold the business in April after operating it for eight years.

“A lot of people are sad to see it go, but it’s a time for us to turn the page in our lives,” Jacob said. “Ideally, it would’ve gone to somebody who was going to continue it. We’re the third or fourth owners of this business as it is. Ideally somebody like us would’ve come along to continue it, but we had it on the market for over a year and somebody came along and it was the right opportunity for us, so we had to go with it. It’s sad to see it go, but it’s also exciting to see what it’s going to become.”

He said he understands the new owners plan to continue it as “something with food,” and it’ll reopen sometime next year, but he’s unsure of the particulars.

Jacob said he and Olivia are just ready to move on. Just in their 30s, the couple is far from ready to retire.

“We’re sticking around here,” Jacob said. “We’ve got a lot of different projects we’re involved in. We’re not entirely sure. We’re going to take the fall and decide what’s next.”

Olivia agreed, saying it is just time for a change.

“It wasn’t our lack of success,” she said. “We were looking for something different.”

Started young

Jacob said that when they took over the café, they both were 22 and had goals for the restaurant.

“We set up a bunch of goals and we accomplished them,” he said.

Those goals included upgrading the outside seating, updating the infrastructure and getting a foundation under the entire building, he said.

Olivia said they made a few changes to the menu, but mostly just improved on what it had been.

“Yeah, I don’t think we took much out,” she said. “I don’t think the breakfast menu has changed at all, we’ve just changed things to make things a bit more efficient in the kitchen or things that weren’t made in-house before are now. We make all the crepes, biscuits, French bread.”

Jacob said they now make “a lot of the stuff that used to be bought.”

“We make all of our soups and we expanded the lunch menu quite a bit just because of the lunch crowd in the winter,” Olivia added. “We needed to find a way to make a good place to go for locals as well as for folks from out of town. We tried to expand the lunch menu.”

The café has regularly employed about a dozen people during the tourist season, with two or three staying on during the winter months.

“We’ve had a lot of really good employees over the years and a lot of seasonal employees coming back,” Jacob said.

In fact, they got into the café as employees.

“Olivia had worked here in high school. It was her first job and she had a good relationship with the previous owner (Tammie Couch),” Jacob said. “That’s kind of how we got into this position.”

Olivia’s familiarity with the café was instrumental in their success.

“Olivia had a pretty good understanding of what this place was about,” Jacob said. “We wanted to elevate it even further.”

Feeding many

Catering primarily to breakfast and lunch customers, the small café seats 35-40 people at a time, including the three inside tables and the garden outside.

“Because of COVID, we’re still doing counter service so we had to change the inside seating a little bit, so there’s only three tables in there right now instead of seven,” Olivia said. “Out here (in the garden) it’s pretty much the same as it has been in the past.”

“At our peak in 2018, we were open all but four days that year, but we’ve definitely pared back, both for our sanity and just because of COVID regulations,” Jacob said. “We can churn a lot of people through this small space. I don’t know how we do it.”

But now it’s time to move on.

“It’s time for something else — a new chapter,” Jacob said. “It’s time to evaluate what we want to do next, and we’ve got plenty of stuff to do.”

“We’ve appreciated our customers and their support throughout the years … because we truly couldn’t have made it this far without them,” Olivia said. “We’ve met a lot of awesome people who made our time at the café really meaningful. This was an incredibly difficult decision for us, and we spent a lot of time discussing it with each other and family and friends before we accepted the offer.”

As for the future, the Losbys may not be done.

“We also wanted to add, there may be a recipe book in the works for some favorite soups and sweets that we’ve made at the café,” Olivia said, adding that people can follow them on social media for details in coming months.

Where: 8 S. Main St., Joseph.

Who: Jacob and Olivia Losby.

Phone: 541-432-9898.

Email: oldtowncafejoseph@gmail.com.

Hours: 7:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; closed Wednesday.