In Hudson, Minnesota, a small-town restaurant faced the fight of its life, and it was a team of teenagers who rose to the challenge.
Urban Olive & Vine, founded by Carol and Chad Trainer, had always been more than just a place to grab a bite. For years, the couple recruited from the 14-18-year-old age bracket, giving eager young minds a crash course not only in work, but in life. Carol loved training her “sponge”-like recruits, passing down lessons they could carry far beyond the kitchen.
Then, the tables turned.
Carol suffered a seizure that left her in a months-long coma. Chad stayed faithfully at her hospital bedside. The restaurant could have easily gone dark, but the kids had other plans.
“Without them the restaurant would not exist,” Chad told Boyd Huppert’s Land of 10,000 Stories at KARE 11. “These kids became adults and ran our business, and took care of me.”
One of those “teen adults” was 17-year-old Acacia Kunkle, who began showing up at 5:30 a.m. to open the café entirely on her own. She became the kind of leader others, like 15-year-old Joe Stephenson, naturally looked up to.
Joe and Acacia helped hold things down during the day alongside other homeschoolers, while the public-school crew joined in after classes. Sixteen-year-old Lainey Dombrovski recalls, “Me and Tori mainly, we’d go shopping for Chad. I have pictures of like huge carts of stuff and my car would be full of stuff.”
They didn’t just keep the doors open, they trained each other, invented new specials, and supported one another through the uncertainty.
On May 5th, Carol passed away in the hospital. Chad closed Urban Olive & Vine so his young staff could attend the funeral. Afterwards, they came back, slowly, steadily, and with the same discipline and strength they had built over the long months.
A family-owned restaurant was saved, not by industry veterans or big investors, but by a tight-knit gaggle of teens who refused to let the heart of their community fade away.
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