The Coffee Pot Is Still Here

Yesterday, I sat down with Jean McKenna, former owner of The Coffee Pot here in Littleton, New Hampshire.

It felt like a full-circle moment.

Back in February, I wrote How North Country Business Owners Can Share Hard News Without Losing Trust — Part 2 after The Coffee Pot’s new owner announced, rather abruptly, that it would be closing and reopening as something completely different. People were hurt. People were angry. People were grieving. Trust had been broken, and I wrote about what happens when difficult business decisions are communicated without giving a community enough time or space to process them.

At the time, I did not know Jean McKenna.

I did not know Jim.

And I did not know the story that came before.

I certainly did not know how Jean and Jim had handled their own departure from The Coffee Pot when they sold it in 2025.

Jean did.

She had read my article.

In fact, when we eventually met for coffee, she arrived with a folder containing pages she had printed from my website. She had taken notes on the article. She wanted to talk about communication and listening.

But before we ever got to that, she looked at a photo of me that she had printed and asked me a completely different question.

“Why is your mouth closed?”

It caught me off guard.

I told her the truth. I had always been insecure about my smile. Somewhere along the way, I had convinced myself that smiling with my teeth made my face look fat.

Jean looked at me and told me I had a beautiful smile.

The next day, I started changing my photos.

That may sound like a strange detail to include in a story about The Coffee Pot, but I think it is actually the whole story.

Jean has a way of seeing people.

Not glancing at them. Not serving them. Not making polite conversation while moving on to the next thing.

Seeing them.

I experienced it within an hour of sitting across from her, and after talking with her on North of Normal yesterday, I understand why so many people in this community still miss The Coffee Pot so deeply.

When I announced Jean as my guest, the response was enormous. People called her a treasure. An icon. A beautiful lady. They talked about her smile, her humor, the meals they remembered, the generations of their families who had passed through those doors. More than one person hoped she was coming on the show to announce that she was reopening The Coffee Pot.

At the beginning of the episode, I read many of those comments to her.

Jean cried.

“I miss them as much as they miss me,” she said.

The Coffee Pot became part of Jean’s life in 1980, when Jim purchased what was then a rough little coffee-and-doughnut shop with a high counter and a few stools. Jean and Jim met shortly afterward, married within five months, and she joined him in the business.

Over time, they built it into the place so many people remember.

But listening to Jean tell the story, what stood out to me was not the equipment, the booths, the homemade bread, or even the lines that sometimes stretched outside.

It was the people.

Jean knew their names.

She knew their children and grandchildren. She knew where they lived. She remembered people who had worked for her as teenagers and later returned with children of their own. She talked to people in line. She teased them. She hugged them. She paid attention to whether someone wanted a hug and respected it when they did not.

She once told me that remembering people’s names mattered to her. If she could not remember someone’s name when they first walked through the door, she would keep talking until it came back to her. Before they left, she wanted them to hear her say it.

Mary. Pete. Fred. Tina. Amanda.

You matter enough for me to remember who you are.

That was The Coffee Pot.

And then came the part of our conversation I did not know.

Jim was tired. He was eighty-six years old and still running around the North Country helping with everything the restaurant needed. Eventually, he told Jean he could not keep doing it.

Jean asked him to give her a year.

She interviewed four interested buyers.

And when she and Jim finally decided to sell, Jean asked the buyer not to tell anyone yet because she wanted to tell her staff herself.

But as the end got closer, she could not do it.

She told me she knew what was coming and could not bear to stand there telling her people, including her customers, without crying. She did not want to work with tears in her eyes. She did not think she could think with tears in her eyes.

So she waited.

When her customers found out when she was leaving, they were heartbroken.

They hugged her.

She cried.

And then, later, Jean read my article about how business owners should communicate difficult changes.

She told me yesterday that she read it and thought about all the things she “shoulda, coulda” done.

“But I couldn’t,” she said.

I appreciated her telling me that more than I can explain.

Because I had written about The Coffee Pot without knowing her side of the story. I had written about the responsibility leaders carry when their decisions affect a community, and I still believe deeply in that responsibility.

But now I understood something I had not understood before.

Jean had spent forty-five years building relationships with the people who walked through those doors.

Forty-five years of remembering names.

Forty-five years of asking about children and grandchildren.

Forty-five years of teasing, laughing, hugging, serving, showing up, and making people feel like they mattered.

And when she reached one of the hardest moments of her life as a business owner, she did not handle it perfectly.

But there was grace for her.

There was forgiveness.

There still is.

I know that because people are still looking for her.

Some of them now drive to the Lincoln Diner, where Jean works as a hostess. She told me she tries to visit with people several times before they leave so they know she still loves them. People stop on their way to Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Rhode Island because they know Jean will be there.

When she first started working there, her managers told her she could not hug customers.

Jean wondered whether she could stay.

Then one day, a party of nine people she knew got up to leave. One by one, every single one of them hugged her right in front of her manager.

Her manager shook her head and said, “I guess that’s the way it is.”

Jean has been allowed to hug people ever since.

That is when something clicked for me.

People keep talking about wanting The Coffee Pot back.

They miss the place. They miss their favorite seat. They miss the food. They miss the routine of walking through those doors and knowing what would be waiting for them.

And I think, over all those years, the feeling became attached to the place.

Warmth.

Familiarity.

Connection.

Belonging.

Community.

But after sitting with Jean, I realized that the thing people are grieving was never contained by those walls.

Jean is creating it in Lincoln now.

She created it when I met her inside The Healthy Rhino and watched people surround her with hugs.

She created it when she sat across from me, looked at a photograph, and noticed that I was hiding my smile.

She created it every time she remembered someone’s name, asked about their family, walked Main Street, talked with shop owners, or made another human being feel interesting and important.

Jean possesses what I can only describe as an extraordinary enthusiasm for other people.

And that is very good news for Littleton.

Because it means The Coffee Pot is not gone.

Not the part that mattered most.

We can create that feeling wherever we go.

We can remember someone’s name.

We can ask about their story.

We can look them in the face when they speak.

We can notice them.

We can listen.

We can hug them, when they want to be hugged.

We can carry into the places we live and work the simple belief that the human beings around us matter.

Their stories matter.

Their names matter.

A hug matters.

That is what Jean and Jim built for forty-five years.

Maybe we associated it with twenty-nine seats, a familiar counter, breakfast, coffee, and a little restaurant on Main Street because that was where we experienced it.

But the real loss would be believing it disappeared when the doors closed.

It did not.

Jean carried it with her.

And the rest of us can carry it forward.

-Amanda