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Out of Africa: Bruce and Frankie Muller build Bozeman businesses
March 29, 2011
His accent’s mostly gone now, but when you talk to Bruce Muller, owner of the Homepage Café in Bozeman, you might hear a bit of an accent slip through.
Muller’s accent comes from being him being raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), a strife-torn country in South Africa. Muller and his wife, Frankie, met in South Africa in 1983 when she was on a photography safari. The couple came to Montana in 1989 and stumbled on Bozeman, bought a business and stayed.
While traveling through Bozeman, they stumbled upon the Voss Inn, an 1883 bed and breakfast inn that was for sale. The couple bought the Inn, stayed and opened another business, the Homepage Café in downtown Bozeman. The couple endured hardship last winter when a natural gas line exploded and destroyed about one-half of a downtown Bozeman city block across the street from the Homepage. While the Homepage was able to remain open, other businesses were shuttered for months.
The couple’s businesses have suffered through the recession, and they’ve felt the economic pinch. They remain optimistic about their businesses. “It’s how we approach life,” Frankie said. “If it feels good we do it … then just hold our breath.”
On one counter at the Homepage Café lie dozens of photos, and on the walls hang artwork that the Mullers have brought back from South Africa. Through these you get a glimpse of what life is like in Zimbabwe — a country that Bruce Muller would one day love to live in again, were it not for the country’s troubles. The country has roughly 90 percent unemployment, and food is scarce and it has the highest inflation rate in the world, Muller says.
“I would go back in a shot,” he said, with his soft South African accent, “but the standard of living is terrible.” For instance, there are no bathrooms at nice restaurants — but you are given a pail. A loaf of bread costs 30 trillion Zimbabwe dollars — roughly the equivalent of a policeman’s monthly salary, he said, and electricity works only about one day a week. “I can’t believe it’s the same country I grew up in,” Muller said.
Even a small town like Bozeman seems fast-paced, compared to Muller’s native Zimbabwe. “This is such a contrast to what I was used to,” he said. “The cultural gap between the United States and South Africa is huge.”
Still, Montana holds a charm for Muller similar to the pull that Zimbabwe has on his heart. He’s close to wildlife and, he said, “It’s nice to know I can be fishing in five minutes from work. I like the extremes.”
One of the extremes that the Mullers have had to experience has not been cultural, however. It’s been economic. In the recent recession they’ve witnessed the closing of several downtown Bozeman shops since they opened in 2005. “You just don’t see the foot traffic,” Frankie said, as customers filed in a fairly busy Saturday morning in February. “There are encouraging days like today, though.”
Staying competitive means increasing customer service, and being careful where you cut. “You’ve got to wear a lot of hats,” Bruce said. The Mullers had 30 applicants in one day for a job opening they had for a maid.
One bright spot is that employees covet their jobs more than during a boom-time economy. Those jobs as baristas or cooks that were once filled with high school and college students and now filled by college graduates.
“People need those jobs now,” she said “and we’re able to pick and choose among the best applicants.”
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