Remote workers and retirees alike have flocked to scenic Spokane, driving up home prices. But the city is working through its growing pains.
By Emily Mason, Forbes Staff
Bruce Munholand spent 32 years working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, mostly in Alaska, where he met his wife, Keri. His last posting was in St. Louis, managing the cleanup of a suburban waste site contaminated with radioactive materials from The Manhattan Project era. In early 2021, shortly after his retirement from the Corps, Bruce, now 71, and Keri, now 55, hooked up their side hustle—a cobalt blue 1969 Citroen van retrofitted in Europe to serve gourmet coffee—to their truck and drove 1,870 miles Northwest, over five days, to Spokane, Washington. They had picked the city for its natural beauty, reasonable costs, proximity to two of their three adult children (one in Seattle and one in Spokane) and coffee-consciousness. “Knowing that coffee was already a big deal in the Northwest, it was a business that we knew would travel,” says Keri.
These days, the Munholands position their Surge Coffee Co. van in downtown Spokane, by the 100-acre Riverfront Park (the site of the 1974 World’s Fair) and at sporting and other events. They dispense batch brews, mochas and chai lattes at $6 to $8 a cup and do about $70,000 a year in sales, donating all their tips to charities, including local and international Christian relief agencies. “I’ve always used repurposed as opposed to retired, because there’s always something to do,’’ says Bruce. They’re planning to add a second van serving ice cream from a local dairy and to eventually hire a professional manager so, as Keri puts it, “we can finally go to Italy.”
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