Valley couple opens Blue Marlin Coffee

Veteran entrepreneurs Donlee and Dave Marlin have opened a new business named Blue Marlin Coffee Co.   

Launched last month, Blue Marlin is a boutique coffee-roasting company located in the couple’s Spokane Valley home. 

After 25 years of owning a multimedia company, an in-home hair salon, and working for Live Real Estate, Donlee Marlin says opening a coffee boutique made sense to her and her husband since they have long loved fresh-roasted coffee. 

Marlin says she and her husband were introduced to a local coffee roaster through their multimedia production company, Marlin Media Inc., and they realized Blue Marlin Coffee would be a great fit with their other businesses. 

Marlin says they buy their coffee beans through a local co-op and sell their coffee both in whole bean and ground versions to their salon clients and small businesses. Along with direct sales, Blue Marlin sells its product online, at bluemarlincoffee.com. The company offers light, medium, and dark roasts and blends, and Marlin says it offers a variety of ordering and custom packaging options.

In naming the coffee company, Marlin says she and her husband wanted to keep their multimedia company’s blue fish as a logo, and the nautical theme has provided what she says to be the most fun part of their business: naming their coffee blends, such as Buried Treasure and Island Buzzard. 

—Kendall Heintzelman

Fashion consultant plans N. Side store

Positive Presentations, an image and fashion consulting business here owned by Cheryl M. Smith, plans to open a fashion store named Haute4Less on Spokane’s North Side shortly. 

The store will be located in a 1,200-square-foot space at 1028 W. Rosewood, about a block northwest of the intersection of Monroe Street and Francis Avenue. As the store name indicates, Smith says she is “trying to let people know they can dress hot for less.”

Smith began Positive Presentations in 1999. Originally from Alaska, she says Positive Presentations was a business consulting agency in Anchorage. 

She says she often found herself dressing women for interviews and would also help friends and women from church with their wardrobe choices. Her grandmother owned a dress shop in the 1940s, and consequently, Smith says, she’s always been interested in fashion. 

When Smith moved to Spokane, she says she then decided to transform Positive Presentations into an image and fashion consulting business. 

Smith says she is a personal stylist image consultant for more than 30 women in Spokane. Services that Smith provides as an image consultant include personal shopping and styling, photography shoots, model coaching, personal and corporate image consulting, and closet cleanouts and reorganization. 

 

—Kendall Heintzelman

Travel agency here to start magazine

Travel 4 All Seasons travel agency owners Al Hague, a photojournalist, and his wife Diane, a travel and trip-planning specialist, plan to publish a travel-related magazine out of their home office in Spokane.

Al Hague says the first edition of the free publication, Travel Smart Magazine, will be available online and in print April 5. He says 5,000 copies will be printed by Century Publishing Co., in Post Falls, and will be distributed all over the city of Spokane, to various stores, salons, coffee shops, and dentists’ and doctors’ offices. 

Hague says TSM will be published every other month, and each issue will feature popular destinations, photography, travel tips, and testimonials for prospective travelers. The online edition of TSM, at travelsmartmagazine.net, will feature expanded coverage with more information and images, says Hague.

Hague says he has been a photojournalist for years and has traveled a lot. 

The Hagues get their ideas for stories from personal travel experience and knowledge of the travel industry, he says. He also says he receives information from fellow travelers and businesses.

“I get hundreds of emails every day” relating to travel tips and stories, he says.  

Travel “can be done easy or can be done hard,” says Hague. As the magazine name indicates, its main goal is to make traveling a smoother experience by providing resources and tips that will enable readers to travel smart, he says. 

Hague says as of now they are in the process of lining up advertisers and sponsors, and the TSM website will soon be launched. 

 

—Kendall Heintzelman

Café opens second  eatery in U-District

The Fresh Plate Café has opened its second location on the Washington State University Spokane campus in the University District here. 

Barbara Pagarigan, owner of Fresh Plate Café, says the company opened the new eatery in a recently remodeled space on the first floor of the Student Academic Center, referred to as SAC and located at the center of campus, starting off the spring semester, on Jan. 28. 

Fresh Plate Café already operates a restaurant in the WSU College of Nursing Building, located along Spokane Falls Boulevard. The SAC location was intended to be the first for Fresh Plate Café on campus, she says, but remodeling took longer than expected. 

The new Fresh Plate Café employs 10 workers, says Pagarigan, and about half of her employees are students. 

Fresh Plate Café offers many local, healthy menu items, she says. Flatbreads, pizza, paninis, deli trays, and salads are all offered, as well as coffee from Roast House Coffee. Students order at a counter and sit at chairs and tables available throughout the SAC. 

Pagarigan opened a food truck, called The Bistro Box, in Seattle in 2010. She says she moved back to Spokane in 2013, where The Bistro Box found a home at 3818 N. Nevada, on Spokane’s North Side. 

Pagarigan says she plans to open a catering company, Fresh Plate Market & Catering, at the Nevada location in March. 

The Fresh Plate Café in the SAC is open for students taking evening classes. Its hours are Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Friday’s 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. It’s closed on weekends. 

 

—Kendall Heintzelman