Settling down
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 1 month AGO
From left: Caffeine Fix owners Yaremy Ibarra and Danae Mendez and their employee Jayleen Carrano stand outside the newly-opened Caffeine Fix in Othello.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Caffeine Fix co-owner Danae Mendez mixes a coffee drink for a customer Thursday. The shop uses Conversatio coffee, roasted in Othello.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | August 18, 2025 1:20 AM
OTHELLO — After more than a year of roaming around Othello, Caffeine Fix has found a home.
“I always wanted to start a coffee shop,” said Danae Mendez, who co-owns Caffeine Fix with Yaremy Ibarra. “And (Ibarra) always told me, ‘Well, you don’t know anything about running a coffee shop.’ So she came up with the idea of doing a trailer, and she built it herself.”
The mobile coffee trailer made its debut in May 2024, but Mendez and Ibarra found it wasn’t as easy as just locking the wheels and firing up the espresso maker.
“When we first started, … we were parking out at City Hall, at the parks during baseball games, just kind of moving around town,” Mendez said.
But that created some conflicts, Mendez said, so the partners began parking their mobile coffee shop in private parking lots, doing pop-ups, and sometimes setting up at McCain Foods to offer coffee to employees there. But the dream of a permanent location was always in the background. Then it turned out that El Jazmin on Main Street had a coffee stand built into the back of the building that the owner was willing to rent out, and Caffeine Fix had a home. The shop opened Aug. 1.
Ibarra owns another business, so she mostly keeps the books for Caffeine Fix, she said. Mendez runs the shop full-time from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends.
“There are a lot of people who go out of town for work, (and) nothing's really open before six o'clock,” Mendez said. “So it gives them a chance to be able to stop for coffee on the way out. And then for people who go out to Moses (Lake), it hits them right here and they go down Seventh (Avenue) and they grab the highway that way.”
The trailer is still in operation for a few hours three days a week, Mendez said. Ibarra’s cousin Jayleen Carreno works for them as well, and Ibarra’s teenage son puts in some hours as well.
“(Danae’s) handling most of the days here,” Ibarra said. “I told her when we were talking about opening, ‘You know you’re not going to have days off, right?’”
Right now, Caffeine Fix is just a drive-thru, but Ibarra and Mendez are looking into putting in a counter by a side door and setting up a couple of tables outside. Being close to the high school means students will start coming by, Ibarra said, not all of whom drive.
Caffeine Fix uses locally-roasted coffee from Conversatio, Mendez said. They also find ways to show appreciation through rotating discounts. Last Monday, first responders got $1 off their orders, she said. Tuesday city workers got the same discount and on Wednesday it was employees at nearby Ace Hardware. Ace was helpful to the partners when they operated out of the trailer, Ibarra said.
“They allowed us to park in their empty lot,” she said. “We're really grateful for that.”
The discounts were popular, Ibarra said; some of the customers came back for a second coffee drink.
“That's what's nice about being in a small town and not like a big chain coffee shop,” she said. “Danae’s always working on new things to bring into the to the stand, working on how we could get out there.”
Caffeine Fix
78 N. Desdemona Drive, Othello
509-331-6445
5 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday,
Caffeine Fix co-owner Danae Mendez mixes a coffee drink for a customer Thursday. The shop uses Conversatio coffee, roasted in Othello.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”