Honey Buns Café in Maupin Connects Coffee with Community
By Donna Henderson
Maupin Ore., April 4, 2024 — For Madeline Rhoades, a neighborhood café is not just about selling coffee and pastries— it’s about contributing to the community, and connection, and making the kinds of sweet memories that last a lifetime.
In June of 2023, after five months of intensive renovation, Madeline and her partner, Mike Johnston opened Honey Buns Café and Bakery on Maupin’s Main Street, in the location previously occupied by Xena Graphics. Local and visitor trade has been steadily brisk in the ten months since, patrons attracted as much by the owners’ warm welcome and the homey feel of the space as by the delicious house-made pastries and an array of coffee and other drinks.
I caught up with Madeline on a rare morning off, for an interview from her home as she relaxed with some yoga stretches.
DH: What inspired you to open a cafe? Was it is recent idea or a long-time dream?
MR: I grew up in Kingman, Arizona, in a very close-knit family. My parents were both teachers, so we had weekends and summers together every single year. We lived in the downtown area, and would often walk to and from our local coffee shop. I always thought it was a cool place to be, and it was a ritual for our family to go there. I would almost always get either a chocolate muffin or an almond poppy seed muffin, and a hot chocolate. And if we were really good, we would get one of those orange cream sodas, which —for that reason—I now sell at Honey Buns. So I think that at a really young age, the idea of a coffee shop was planted in my head. I still have so many good memories.
When I turned eighteen, I moved around Arizona for a while, then went to college and got a degree in Hotel and Restaurant management.
On kind of a whim, I moved to Portland in 2014. I was there for four years, working in restaurants and property management, and just doing all kinds of things “coffee.” Then in 2017, I went on a rafting trip on the Deschutes, and fell in love with Maupin! The environment, the people —it was just so fun and bright and full of life. So I decided to move here, and I almost immediately got a job with a rafting company.
DH: So you were in Maupin, working for a rafting company, with the idea of opening a coffee shop someday, somewhere. How did the someday become “now” and the somewhere “Maupin?”
MR: Well, there was a series of events that began with a house fire. My partner and I were suddenly displaced, and the community immediately surrounded us and just took such incredible care. I couldn’t imagine having something like that happen to us anywhere else in the world where we would have felt so immediately taken care of with love.
And I thought immediately, “We’re going to stay and make the best of this, and we’re going to find a way to give back to the community.” After something like that, it’s very hard to conjure up a way to say thank you in a way that is equal to how grateful we are. So I thought “what if we make a place for the community?”
And things just started coming together at that point to make the next stroke of luck, and then the next, happen.
I had been keeping an eye on potential spaces in town, but there’s not much in the way of available storefronts. Then the owner of Xena Graphics on Main Street —they’d been there seventeen years—told me that they were thinking about moving out. The first time I walked into that space, I could see it: that this was meant to be a coffee shop— it had coffee shop windows! And I guess I made a good enough pitch that the landlord decided, “Alright, I’ll give it a try.”
So that was one huge stroke of luck because our location is massive to our success.
DH: I know there was a lot to do to transform it from a manufacturing shop to a café— What did it take, and how did you even know what to do and how to do it?
MH: My parents owned a wine bar in Kingman for about ten years. I helped them renovate where I could, and I watched how they were doing it, things that they liked and the things that they didn’t like, and how everybody was receiving it. And I learned a ton from that.
As to renovating the space for Honey Buns, first of all, I wasn’t doing this by myself: my partner Mike has been involved in this from day one, and almost everything you see in that shop has been built or fixed or upcycled by Mike or myself. 99% of what is in that space is reclaimed and re-used. The floor and the tabletops are the only new things. And we had a ton of help: my parents and my sister came to help, and Mike supervised all the construction. It took about five months…we pushed as hard as we could because we knew we needed to get done before rafting season started.
Mike runs it with me; the two of us doing this together has been huge to our success. And hiring our single employee has been instrumental also; having a close-knit team that works together so well is what makes it work.
DH: What are you discovering as you “live and learn,” now?
MH: Well, I’m learning how little sleep I can get by on, for one thing! And I’ve done a lot of learning on the go. Also, I’ve always paid attention to the small details, just in life. In every job I’ve ever had, I’ve paid attention to the things that are going well, the things that could be worked on. And I like observing the people who are receiving an experience, whatever that may be. I want to see what they react to, whether positively or negatively— I keep a kind of vigilance, I guess, to what’s important.
Also, because we’re behind the counter all day, we hear a lot of stories and struggles, and what people in the community need. We have a bulletin board where people can post about things they are looking for, need information about, or what is happening in town…and that in turn has been pushing me to get involved in things that I can do to help the community receive what it needs.
DH: What is your vision for Honey Buns, now that it’s been up and running for a while?
MH: My own coffee shop experience in Kingman and all my experiences since have shaped how I’ve done everything at Honey Buns. I want it to be an experience from the second you walk in until the second you leave, and to become memories, hopefully for the rest of your life.
So I’ve tried really hard to create a place where strangers can meet, friends and family can meet, where you can have a business meeting— a place for all kinds of people to come together, have experiences, make memories, learn, and connect.
And I’ve heard from many, many people in the community who are just so thankful to have this space. It’s a business — and I want it to succeed as a business— but it’s also a way of showing this community that we care. We are super thankful to be here in this community, as our business wouldn’t exist without our neighbors and everybody in this town.
There’s a little girl who comes in and just freaks out over the pumpkin muffins, and I think she’s going to remember that, probably for her entire life. She’ll be like “Oh, I remember when I was a kid. We would walk over to the coffee shop and eat a HUGE pumpkin muffin!”
And I hope that it’s a positive and wonderful memory for her for the rest of her life, you know?
Honey Buns is located at 509-1/2 Deschutes Ave. in Maupin, and is currently open Thursday through Monday from 6:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
Learn more at: HoneyBunsCoffee.com.
Support Local News
Available for Everyone; Funded by Readers
