Small Business Spotlight: Cow & Sow owner specializes in friendly service, homemade food

Tracey Coln throws her arms around a customer with three small children.

Old friend?

“I don’t know his name,” said Coln, owner of the Cow & Sow Deli. “I hug everybody.”

Two years after opening, Coln hasn’t lost her enthusiasm for the food business, although she admits it has its ups and downs. As she sees it, every time the front door opens, the cow bell attached it to it heralds the approach of another friend.

Coln opened the deli with a partner who soon dropped out. Coln grew up in a family of dairy farmers outside Vilonia, Ark., and the idea was to bring from-scratch country cooking to the city.

Family photos adorn the wall over one of the deli’s main attractions: a 9-foot-long feed trough that Coln turned into a salad bar packed with applesauce, potato salad, pickled cucumbers and more, all of it made on the premises.

Coln also wanted to use as much locally produced food as possible. She serves coffee from Reverie Coffee Roasters; bread from several local bakeries; lettuce, kale, bean sprouts and other fresh produce from area growers; and spreads and toppings from Sarah Jane’s and Holmes.

Her other goal was to offer vegans and people avoiding gluten and certain food allergens a place where they could eat. Gluten-free bread is available with her sandwiches, while several desserts, all the housemade ice cream and at least one soup a day are made without the stuff.

The ice cream – in flavors such as peanut butter, lavender lemonade and pineapple upside-down cake – is made by Coln’s husband, Curtis. Tracey and her cousin, Mo Barnhart, do most of the rest of cooking.

“It’s all from scratch,” Tracey Coln said.

The deli specializes in overstuffed sandwiches with names like the “Mooooffalett” (a version of the New Orleans classic) and “MoooooBen,” otherwise known as a reuben.

“We do everything with the cow,” Coln said with a smile.

Although Coln had worked in the hospitality business and owned businesses, the deli is her first venture into the restaurant field. She admits she also had no formal culinary training, just a lot of experience.

“No, we just cooked all the time,” said Coln, who has six children and 15 grandchildren. “We never went out to eat.”

One thing she has had to learn is paying attention to food costs. Another is the necessity of delegating work to others.

She employs three women full time and one part time, all of whom either already possessed Coln’s friendly nature or adopted it.

“Before, I was here all the time,” she said. “I’ve got such a good staff.”

Cow & Sow is in the old Renfro Hotel building on Douglas. The deli takes up only about 600 square feet; probably only the open-style kitchen and towering ceiling keep it from feeling too cozy.

Coln rents about the same amount of space next door. That room, called the Renfro Studio – Coln is also a photographer – has seating for 33. It’s available for rent outside the restaurant’s normal hours; Coln allows some nonprofits to use it for free.

The deli offers delivery to the downtown area and sometimes farther afield. Coln even delivered 15 lunches to a business in south Wichita.

The move might not make much sense economically, she said, except that it led to a much larger order. She has expanded the catering portion of her business.

Coln also offers a limited supply of groceries, including milk, eggs, bread, deli meat and some dry goods. Even though downtown residents often complain about the lack of a grocery store in their neighborhood, Coln said they haven’t taken as much advantage of her inventory as she had hoped.

On good days, the deli “turns” the seating next door three times. On so-so days, it’s more like two. Coln said she’s trying to use social media to let customers know about specials and other things happening at her business.

“My favorite part of this is the people and how they react to the food,” she said. “That’s what keeps me excited every day.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 5:30 PM with the headline "Small Business Spotlight: Cow & Sow owner specializes in friendly service, homemade food."