On Main Street, sits a brown brick surrounding a dark green painted building. This place hosts live music three nights a week, serves fresh, in-house roasted coffee and sells all types of books.
Bucer’s Coffeehouse Pub is open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and closed on Sunday.
Pat Greenfield, owner of the coffeehouse for around 19 years, loves being a part of the Moscow downtown community. She is passionate about wanting her place to feel like home to everyone who enters.
Bucer’s supports college students from the University of Idaho, Washington State University and New Saint Andrews College by providing jobs for them and a place to do their schoolwork while relaxing with a cup of coffee.
This coffeehouse has a commercial kitchen, which is unusual. Many other shops get their food items from bakeries, but everything is house made, even the sandwich bread.
They sell house roasted coffee, wine, beer, cigars, used books, cake and more. Their coffee is roasted locally and produced globally from places such as Latin America, the horn of Africa and others.
Bucer’s works with Bulrushed Books to fill the coffeehouse with books for customers to peruse through. Greenfield says the books add another element of welcoming warmth to the place.
“It’s a very nice, beautiful ambiance of art,” Greenfield said. “I love it for its artistic value.”
She didn’t want her customers to feel like they had to get in and out in five minutes. There is wood, leather, brick and various antiques such as the green chairs and large, wood table in the center of the room that are quite old.
Greenfield lived in Lewiston for 23 years after moving from Florida. She chose Moscow as the town to set up Bucer’s, since coffeeshops tend to thrive in college towns.
She has been asked over the years if she would set up another shop in a different location. Her answer is she wants to have time to be with her children and grandchildren too.
In the beginning of the pandemic, Bucer’s struggled since they did curbside pickup instead of dine in.
“We didn’t know anything from day to day,” Greenfield said. “There were hard decisions to be made.”
If there was a sick employee, Greenfield had to immediately find someone else to work. They dealt with the non-maskers and the masker’s controversy as well.
Greenfield didn’t want fights in her shop, so she helped everyone get along. Her employees were required to wear masks while working. Those who came into the coffeehouse could choose to wear a mask or not.
She loves her staff and the people. The staff are trained with excellence, putting the needs of others in front of their own. Greenfield makes sure they serve the best espresso at the highest quality.
Speed is important for the staff as well. It takes longer for them to serve orders since they make coffee and food, so they do their best to provide fast service.
Bucer’s hosts live music on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Greenfield has booked bands to perform for the past 21 years.
At first, she had to go out and find bands, but now they contact her to perform. They play a variety of from jazz, pop and folk, though rap doesn’t seem to fit.
“I love music and live music,” Greenfield said. “That’s probably how that started. You name it, we’ve had it.”
Kim Stager can be reached at argonaut@uidaho.edu or on Twitter @journalismgoals