Bert's Cafe - Brigham City

‘Family’ cafe--Restaurant owners celebrate 

90 years as they prepare to hand down the business to fourth generation

(Team US 89 Editor's Note: The article and photos were posted March 27, 2019, and are Copyright by "The Box Elder New Journal," Brigham City, Utah. We found this material on the newspaper's website: https://www.benewsjournal.com/ The material is under the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright law.)

March 27, 2019  •  Sean Hales  •  Managing Editor

The Olsen family, who own and operate Bert’s Cafe on Main Street in Brigham City are celebrating a significant milestone this week: Their 90th year of operating the family business.

Certainly, many restaurants have come and gone in the years that Bert’s has been operating. It is a mark only eclipsed in the city by Idle Isle Cafe, which opened in 1921 and is purported to be the third-longest continuously running restaurant in the state.

Bert’s was opened in March 1929 by Bert Leroy Olsen and was passed down over the years to his son Albert, and then to Albert’s son — also named Albert — who currently operates the eatery with his wife, Kathy.

“We still do everything from scratch, and we have recipes going back to his [Albert, the current owner’s] grandmother,” Kathy Olsen says.

Keeping the business in the family is a source of pride for the Olsens. The current Albert Olsen left a job at Hill Air Force Base after his sister’s husband passed away and his mother needed help running the business.

The continuation of that legacy was in question as Albert and Kathy started contemplating retirement. Their son, a chef who ran the restaurant for a while and tested the waters of dinner service, was offered a job elsewhere that was too good to pass up.

Brittnee Roskelly

Although the business will not be passed on to another Albert or any other Olsen son, the family-owned legacy will continue when Albert and Kathy’s daughter, Brittnee Roskelly takes control.
   
Roskelly, 30, started helping out in the cafe when she was just 12 years old. She has left the cafe a couple of times in her life to pursue different jobs, but as her parents started seriously considering selling the business and entering retirement, “That was when I had to step back and be like, hey, do I really want to see this go out of the family when we’ve come this far?” she said. “It’s a big deal. It’s part of the reasons why I want to continue it.”

She added that as she contemplated taking the business, she found it difficult to not think about the customers, particularly the regulars who frequent the cafe on a daily or weekly basis. “Half of my [wedding] guests were customers from here,” Roskelly said, adding later, “I really do love being here. I’ve known all the customers forever; it’s like my second family; home away from home...It is a lot of hard work, but it’s also going in to see family and friends.”

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