The Airstream Café goes mainstream

With popular restaurant The Shack falling victim to the devastation of Super Typhoon Yutu in late October, Glen Hunter saw an opportunity to partner up with Jasper Van Der Maas and, between the two of them, came up with The Airstream Café at the ground floor of Marianas Business Plaza in Susupe.

“We opened the café shortly after [Super] Typhoon Yutu so it’s kind of like a ‘silver lining’ from the bad storm. Jasper had already set up the café here prior and so I remember that it was here and ready to go,” Hunter said.

While The Shack is undergoing repairs, Hunter said The Airstream Café serves an important function of providing employment to the displaced employees of The Shack.

“Our important goal was to get The Airstream Cafe running as quickly as possible to create jobs who were at The Shack. That was the initial mindset because we got staff that…will be out of work for a while,” Hunter said.

“That was the push to get it open as fast as possible: to get them employed again because The Shack will be open but it will take a few more weeks. …A few days after the storm, we worked on permitting, licensing, get the power, etc. and so we were able to…get the staff back to work quickly,” he added.

The Shack is a popular breakfast and lunch place in Susupe, frequented by both residents and tourists because of its unique and novelty menu entrees.

Van Der Maas said The Airstream Café is a continuation of his dream of opening a different kind of café on Saipan. “Before becoming The Airstream Café, I opened this in 2016 when I was still in high school but when I started, I didn’t know anything about running my own business…so I closed down for two years and focused on other things. …I am taking this collaboration as a base to start out something and to do my own thing instead of going to work in an office.”

“It was a blessing that Glen came up to me and asked me to open up, so from what he has taught me, I’ve learned a lot how to do a business and now we are building the system and expanding it. Other plans includes a bar at night [and that] is our next project,” he added.

Barely three months old, The Airstream Café carries some food items from The Shack and it is still evolving to become a café that will have its own identity. “Our menu is still evolving as we took a lot of the offerings that we have at The Shack. We kind of knocked them down a little bit in size and minimize the menu offering because we have a smaller space,” Hunter said.

“We recreated them here at the Airstream initially because it is the quickest way to get it running. But as time went on, we have been altering, changing, and morphing it. …It’s still a work in progress and Jasper and I are excited,” Hunter added.

The café was inspired by the Airstream travel trailer—considered an American icon released in the 1930s. “It is not hard to miss us because it is the only Airstream on island. We decided to call it The Airstream Cafe because when I ran the first business, it was called ‘Vega’ but people still called it the Airstream and so we just went along with what the people are used to calling it,” Van Der Maas said.

“My initial goal was to have a coffee shop that carries good coffee, sell coffee-related items, and just try to bring that trend over to Saipan so we get the people to taste good coffee and not just the cheap stuff. Now with the collaboration with Glen, we came up with food menu and it became like an actual café where you can sit down and have some lunch and, at the same time, enjoy our specialized coffee,” he added.

Plans to upgrade the facility are in the works as the partners look into developing the café to be able to operate more hours and appeal to all types of customers. “There will be renovations to create a more distinct space to turn it into a bistro or bar and once we get to that stage we will push advertising a little bit. We are getting a handful of [resident] customers…and we get a decent amount of tourists, which is pretty cool because the building itself is a tourist attraction,” Hunter said.

“We hope it will grow into a more trendy spot and make tourists to come by and get an authentic one-of-a-kind menu and feel and some of the best coffee on island,” he added.

“It’s a very warm, good feeling café. We are accessible and parking is not a problem where we are,” Van Der Maas said. “Just like what Glen does very well at The Shack is that he gives a lot of love and we want that atmosphere here too.”

The Airstream Café is open Monday to Friday from 8am to 2pm. For more information, visit their Facebook page, “The Airstream Café.”