Colleen's Coffee Corner brewing up business

SANDPOINT — This is Colleen’s corner.

It says so on the sign.

Colleen Ankersmit leases the swath of grass with the gravel drive-through.

She tends to the irises, tulips and the lawn, and is responsible for the aroma that rises from the small hut at the intersection of Colburn Culver Road and Highway 200.

Colleen’s Coffee Corner opened this week catering to may local residents on their way to and from work, as well as summer visitors and motorists or cyclists passing through.

“They like to sit on the picnic tables and have their drinks,” Ankersmit said.

She took over the business in time for the summer crowds, she said, but plans to stoke up the brew not just through summer, but all the time.

Colleen’s Coffee Corner is here to stay, she said.

In addition to selling Evan’s Brothers Coffee and the Monin flavors, which she she purchases locally, she also serves baked goods, water, a variety of drinks including sodas and has a box of energy products for a quicker pick-me-up.

She plans on a July 10 grand opening that will include barbecue, and best of all, she is an early riser.

“I just live down the road,” Ankersmit said.

Colleen’s Coffee Corner is open from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., it is closed on Sunday and has shorter hours on Saturday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“That’s the day I slack off,” she said.

She knows the names of most of her patrons.

“They are my neighbors,” she said.

She also offers farm fresh eggs at the small, 20-foot square hut that is brown as an egg from a Rhode Island Red.

Ankersmit greets motorists at the drive-up with its pots of flowering petunias at each corner.

“We sell a little bit of everything out here in the country,” she said.