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Hippo Nashua
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Publisher's Note: Not-so-secret recipe It’s a strange thing to walk into a local restaurant and find the decor includes a vintage picture of your father. But that’s what happened to me awhile back when I visited the Midfield Cafe at Nashua’s Boire Field airport. While speaking with owner Sandy Adams, I spied an old black-and-white photo; in it was my dad as a young man shaking hands with the pilot of an old prop plane. What happened was, my dad managed the airport in the days when Nashua was a much smaller community. He died way back in 1968, but Boire Field is a place where continuity counts. Even now, nearly 40 years later, some of his flying buddies gather at the Midfield Cafe to talk planes or whatever else comes up. They do that in part because the Midfield Cafe is the kind of place that’s increasingly rare in this age when every community in America seems to have the same franchised stores and chain outlets. The Midfield is a business run by someone who is there in person every day, who cares what she does, and connects with her customers in a way that some franchise concept can’t. And that’s not all. Consider the Midfield Cafe’s unusual location—on the second floor of a hangar near the airport control tower, with aircraft buzzing by on the tarmac below. It’s not exactly on a busy thoroughfare, unless you count planes. Try selling that to a corporate marketing committee. But Sandy serves more than just breakfast and lunch. She enjoys aviation, so much that she recently became a pilot herself. And that enthusiasm gives her a real connection to her customers, most of whom are aviation folks, too. The result is a successful and unique local business that helps keep Nashua different from other places. How different? Enough for the Midfield Cafe to get included in a recent book titled The $100 Hamburger: A Guide to Pilots’ Favorite Fly-In Restaurants. Not that Sandy’s hamburgers cost $100. (That price includes the flying out and back, I believe.) But to me, the priceless thing about the Midfield Cafe is that it shows that the folks in corporate marketing committees and franchising concepts don’t have a monopoly on the future. In any case, they can’t franchise heart, which is the secret ingredient Sandy Adams brings to her kitchen and her customers. And the proof is, well, in the pudding. She’s recently celebrated her fifth anniversary in business, which is a notable milestone for any business, and especially for a local restaurant. Sandy’s success with the Midfield is a great example for any new small business owner—not only is success possible, but people still appreciate the kind of personal warmth and connection that big national chains have a hard time providing. So hold on. Even in the age of Wal-Mart and Target and McDonald’s, it’s great to see people crave authenticity here in the Gate City.
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The
Telegraph's Teen Paper
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