Like Frodo and Sam’s journey to bring the ring to Mt. Doom, Luke and Tanya Wilbanks needed some friends to build their new Buckley coffee shop.
Seven years ago they purchased the property, relying on realtor friends to pounce on a quick sale so they could buy and rehabilitate the ailing building.
Four years ago they started roasting coffee, hoping to build a community with the help of a father-and-son bean roasting duo. They soon started selling bags of their coffee.
And this November, their permitting and licensing in hand, Anchor House officially opened for in-store brews, brewing fine coffee and doing it for a cause with two full-time and two-part time employees.
Located at 873 Main St., Anchor House is one of the latest storefronts to inject life back into the city’s historic downtown.
The airy, wood-paneled, chandelier-lit coffeeshop has the atmosphere of a Victorian café, with several smaller rooms tucked away behind nooks and corners. The café sells baked goods like muffins and cinnamon rolls from Mama D’s, a local bakery.
Tanya, 44, and Luke, 43, called their team the “Fellowship of The Beans,” a nod to both the epic fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien and an acknowledgement of the time and effort their friends have donated to getting Anchor House off the ground.
The fellowship includes their master roasters Chuck and Nate Jung, “the brains” behind the roasting, along with “a few unspoken Gandalfs,” Luke said.
The view from inside Anchor House.
Stop by the coffee shop and you’ll notice an alleyway shaped perfectly to serve as a drive-thru.
But “we purposefully said no to a drive-thru to force people inside, so we can have face-to-face (conversations),” Luke said. “That will hurt us financially, because we live in America in the 21st century, but it’s worth the risk for the sake of building community.”
With a focus on fine coffees, some of which take around five minutes to prepare, a drive-thru window would pressure the baristas to prioritize speed over quality, Luke said.
Buckley’s already got its share of coffee shops, so what makes Anchor House different is their focus on the sit-down, shared-space approach, the Wilbanks said.
“The quality of our coffee stands alone, but also the atmosphere and the fact we’ve got such a large space,” Tanya said. “We can invite you in to sit and hang out.”
BREWED WITH PURPOSE
The Wilbanks first met after Luke had returned from a 12-country, two-continent, 7,000 mile walk with World Vision, an international Christian emergency relief organization based out of Federal Way.
His journey started in 2007 in Greece and ended at the Enumclaw Starbucks in 2008. A few weeks afterward, Luke visited a coffee shop in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle on his way to a church service and met Tanya, who was working as a barista while going through school.
“I walked in and was like, ‘ooh,’ ” Luke said with a laugh. “She told me if I ever came back, to let her know how I liked it. I’m like, oh yeah, I’ll come back.”
Tanya, who has worked as a hairdresser and baker, now raises and homeschools their boys. Luke, who has for 12 years worked in the water department of the Town of Wilkeson, is about to finish his single term on the Buckley City Council, and chose not to run for re-election so he could focus on Anchor House.
“You really can’t change anything from the council, when it comes to culture,” Luke said. “You can create a framework to hold culture within … but I made a decision that when my time is done, I’m going to focus on creating a culture in Buckley, which businesses can do.”
Growing up in Alaska and spending time in Montana, Luke said he’s used to towns with big-hearted communities, and he wants to help foster that spirit in Buckley without relying solely on tourism. That’s why Anchor House has already been a spot for community meet-ups like their senior soup nights.
“You can bring your book club, your bible study, you can work from home,” Tanya said. “This is a part of our community now. We want it to be a gift, in the sense that there wasn’t something like this before, unless you frequented bars, in Buckley. We wanted a community hub.”
But its driving mission is associated with Love Justice International, a Christian nonprofit that operates children’s homes and schools and works to free children from human trafficking. Anchor House donates ten percent of all sales to Love Justice, the Wilbanks said.
“The main (reason) is, they are intercepting the kids before it happens,” Luke said. “Their whole goal is to set up borders, bus stations everywhere kids are usually trafficking into, and take the kids right then and there.”
Locally, their support looks like raising awareness, helping those at risk of trafficking close to home, and celebrating the progress being made.
“We have lots of dreams and big plans, but we also don’t want to be just vigilantes, idiots making mistakes,” Luke said. “For now, we don’t want to just sit around and do nothing. So that’s why we give to them, and we’ll always give to Love Justice.”
The origin of the Anchor House name comes from Hebrews 6:19 in the Bible: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”
They hope to bring such an “anchor” to their community and to children affected by trafficking.
“We want to do fine coffee, but the greater goal is to encourage people,” Luke said. “Good coffee is the means for conversation.”
The name is also apropos because Anchor House is literally their house. The Wilbanks live and raise their kids, who are 8 and 5 years old, upstairs from the coffee shop.
FOUNDATION IN FAITH
While Anchor House has only just begun selling cups of coffee, the work has been going on behind-the-scenes for about a decade.
“Luke and I would do destination trips” to find cool coffee shops, Tanya said, and she soon got the feeling that they were going to have their own.
Eleven years of blood, sweat, tears and miracles later, she said, it finally happened. But to understand how, you have to understand the foundation of faith it’s built on.
Don’t get it twisted — Anchor House is by no means a “Christian coffeeshop,” the Wilbanks said.
“You’re not gonna hear us say ‘Have a blessed day,’” Tanya said. “What you’re going to find are people baring their souls and sharing hardships… being seen, and known, and loved.”
What Anchor House is, is a coffeeshop on a mission, and the basis of that mission is their faith. Non-denominational Christians, the Wilbanks attend Gospel Life in Puyallup, where Luke is on the preaching team.
The couple in 2011 bought a home on C Street, and around 2014 were contemplating starting a church or other community fulcrum in Buckley. In the spring that year, Luke stumbled across the building at 873 Main Street – and noticed that it “had dropped $88,000 overnight” on a short sale.
That Monday, his real estate agent told him it was impossible – the owners were going to court Friday, so the Wilbanks would have to sell their house and lock this new one down in only five days. Luke asked her to try.
Tuesday night, she brought some realtor friends to walk through the house and report back. It was a flophouse, in poor condition with mold and “gross” carpets, the Wilbanks said, but this gave them leverage in negotiating the price.
Wednesday, the Wilbanks sold their house for $70,000 more than they bought it. Luke ran to the Tacoma bank that held the title to the 873 Main Street building and pleaded with them to lower the price just a bit more so he could clean it up and put a coffee shop inside. The bank liked the sound of that, Luke said, and “so by Thursday, we owned this building.”
To say they got a good deal is an understatement. According to the Pierce County Auditor’s Office, the building’s previous owners bought it for $400,000 in 2005. The Wilbanks picked it up in 2014 for $185,500. They invested about $30,000 into the building “instantly” after receiving it, Luke said, and have been putting their spare pennies in since.
Some might call it luck, but to the Wilbanks it’s a never-ending series of signs from God they’re on the right track: Over the past seven years, the family has kept getting exactly what they needed to make Anchor House work, even though they didn’t have the income at the beginning.
“This isn’t us,” Luke said. “This is God loving us through people. (The community) are the ones buying the coffee, which means their 10 percent is going to free kids. All we are, are conduits of their grace.”
Slabs, tiles, fridges, a brand-new furnace, the espresso machine itself — much of what you see inside has been gifted by friends or community members who support their mission, the Wilbanks said. That also includes plates and dishware donated by The Carlson Block in Wilkeson and help and advice from local businesses Simple Goodness Sisters and Main Street Bistro.
Last winter, their furnace died. The day after the family prayed on it, a friend of Luke’s cut him a check for $4,000 to support the coffee shop — nearly the same amount, Luke says, of a bid he received the night before to put in a new furnace.
“You’d think that’s a one and done, (but) that story, we could tell you on repeat for seven years,” Tanya said. “That’s how this happened. It has been gifts of time, money, resources and skills, and a labor of love.”
