The Market is open!

WALLACE — Food, coffee, beer, books and clothes — all in one place.

This is what Rob and Luanne Wuerfel have created in a relatively short amount of time after acquiring and refurbishing several street-front properties in downtown Wallace.

Located at 600 Cedar St. in the former Tabor’s Emporium space, the Blackboard Marketplace includes several different businesses all serving as extensions of each other.

In just a few quick steps, one can walk from The Fox & Hare Mountain Wear in the farthest south space to Todd’s Bookstore & Coffee. From there, one could keep walking north and find themselves in The Blackboard Café. This ease of access to multiple different products is just one of the many things that can draw someone in.

Each business has its own identity and theme, which gives customers the unique feeling of visiting different stores even though everything is connected.

In order for this bustling marketplace to become a reality though, the Wuerfel’s first had to come to the Silver Valley.

Luanne explained that before becoming full-time Wallace business owners, the couple’s professions were helping others with their businesses — specifically restaurants.

“What we did for several years after we met was travel around and open restaurants for other owners,” she said. “I would do the administrative part, he’d do the kitchen part.”

This line of work took the couple to many different places including New Mexico and the Caribbean. Once the job in the Caribbean wrapped up, the two had their sights on Bend, Ore.

During their long car ride there though, they happened to swing through Wallace during Gyro Days Weekend.

“It was like a Norman Rockwell painting,” Luanne said. “Everything was perfect. Small town that we were looking for that had skiing nearby and a bike trail that came through town — all the pieces came together.”

In 2014, Rob and Luanne moved to town and worked at the Fainting Goat for a year.

Once they got the lay of the land, they decided to put their restaurant knowledge to work for themselves by opening their first business in town in 2016 — the Blackboard Café (formerly on Bank Street) in Wallace.

“We looked at the cost to lease a commercial space and it just started out as a sandwich shop,” Luanne said of those early days. “We’re like ‘OK, if we can sell $50 in sandwiches and we live modestly, we can keep the bills paid.’”

Over time, the menu expanded beyond just sandwiches to include Italian cuisine and other specialty items. The Wuerfels happily embraced the small business space and wore the badge of “New York style eatery” with pride.

As the cafe continued to grow (in both menu items and identity), Rob and Luanne decided that they wanted to branch into another type of business that they felt Wallace needed — clothing.

“We found a great retail space to rent and that was just our pet project that we always wanted to do,” Luanne said. “Wallace needed a clothing store and it’s something we’ve always felt strongly about doing.”

Formerly located less than a block away from the cafe and it’s current location, The Fox & Hare Mountain Wear opened on Sixth Street and offered locals name-brand clothing options that interested them.

The couple juggled the two locations for a year until they entered into negotiation with another party to open a restaurant somewhere else in town. Right around the same time that those negotiations fell through, the Tabor’s building became available.

The Wuerfels pulled the trigger and rather than operate separate businesses all over town, they decided to consolidate.

“It just made sense to put everything under one roof,” Luanne said.

In just four frantic months, Tabor’s Emporium had been moved out and a total renovation was completed to accommodate the new businesses.

While the Blackboard Café and Fox & Hare Mountain Wear are transplants to the new space, sandwiched in-between them is the completely new Todd’s Bookstore & Coffee shop.

Offering Broadcast brand coffee from Seattle and freshly baked goods, such as breads and cookies, the coffee shop is a natural fit for the marketplace. Same with the bookstore that offers a wide range of reading material, it too is an extension of its neighboring, pre-established business.

“All it is is an extension of what we are already doing,” Luanne said. “It looks like four different businesses, but they’re all linked. With The Fox & The Hare, I always wanted to do a book section. And really the coffee and baked goods are just an extension of Blackboard.”

Customers can also enjoy specialty deli meats, craft beer and wine in the new coffee shop.

“It all compliments each other really well,” she said.

Blackboard Café and Fox & Hare Mountain Wear currently offer the same items they used to, but that will change as time goes on.

The Wuerfels plan to add more brands of clothing to Fox & Hare that locals will want to wear and expand the cafe menu to include new items such as artisan pizza.

The couple also plans to develop the other, currently unused, spaces in the upstairs portions of the building, and convert the old cafe space into a small taco shop.

While the process to get to this point has been a long one, Rob and Luanna are happy to finally have everything open.

“We’re really happy,” Luanne said. “We see others enjoying it and that’s been really cool.”

Blackboard Marketplace is open daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. For more information and updates, follow Blackboard Marketplace on Facebook.