Word for day: Fika. Pronounced fee-ka, it’s a Swedish term for taking time to slow down and appreciate the good things in life.
And it’s also a place: Jonas and Shellie Unell’s 4th Street Fika, a coffee house on Appleton City’s main street. Since it opened, it’s brought the flavor of Jonas’ homeland to mid-Missouri, and become a gathering place.
“It’s for us, and for the community,” Jonas explained. “People walk in and can get something they couldn’t get before. They see someone they know and sit down with them and chat.”
Jonas, who grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden, met Shellie when he came to Appleton City in 1988 to attend high school, spending a year with a teacher, Nancy Nichols, and her family. It was an informal study-abroad program, he said, arranged with the family his older brother had lived with when he came to Appleton City.
Shellie, who was two years younger than Jonas, went out with him that year, then he returned to Sweden. Three years later, he returned to see friends, and after that, kept in contact with Shellie through letters — real ones, on paper in envelopes, with stamps, they said.
Shellie, who had graduated from high school and completed a year of college, got a job, saved some money and went to Sweden. The couple got married in Sweden and moved back to Missouri in 1995, where Shellie attended St. John’s School of Nursing in Springfield.
Since then, the couple’s life has spanned two continents, living in one and visiting the grandparents in the other. In 2000, they moved back to Sweden with 4-year-old and 1-year-old sons. Shellie started working for a pharmaceutical company, and had their third child, a daughter. Jonas had a car paint-repair business. They moved to Appleton City several years ago when Shellie’s company offered her a job as leader of a pharmaceutical research and development project, which she does from home.
When Shellie’s sister started looking for a building in Appleton City for a business, the Unells decided to buy the building next door. Now, 4th Street Fika is on one side, and Shellie’s sister owns Down Dog Fitness on the other. It’s on the right as you come into Appleton City, just past the large gazebo being built to house a carousel that will be installed next spring.
Originally, it wasn’t about starting a business, Shellie said, but about saving the building. Built in 1885, it was structurally sound, but the interior had to be gutted. The Unells installed new heating, redid the electric circuits, removed the lowered ceiling to expose the wood beams, replaced windows and doors, and rebuilt the staircase to the second floor, where they now have two short-term rentals.
They furnished the coffee shop downstairs with garage-sale finds, Shellie said. The front of a display cabinet is a recycled door. The Swedish flag on the wall is made of fence wood. Still-life drawings by the couple and family members are on one wall — the art teacher at Appleton City High School famously gave the same drawing assignment every year, so everybody in town has a similar piece of art.
“People have offered to bring theirs in,” Shellie said.
Jonas works at the coffee shop in the mornings — it’s open from 7 a.m until 11 a.m on weekdays, and 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday — and is so busy he needs another staff member to keep up with the orders for espresso drinks and smoothies. The brewed coffee is from Sweden, and is served in mugs — regulars have their own cups, which hang on a rack on the wall. Cinnamon rolls and croissants are served on real plates. He makes fronacke — crunchy seed crackers — and sells chokeladballs and gingersnaps.
The coffee shop doesn’t make money, Shellie said, but the income covers the bills and Jonas’ coffee consumption, which he admits is prodigious. For the Unells, the point is to bring something new to Appleton City, and save the historic building, part of keeping the main street vibrant. The opera house across the street came down two years ago, Shellie said, but empty buildings in the downtown business blocks are being used again.
The Unells have a photograph of their building from 1938 when it was Yoss Bros. Groceries. Appleton City is a farming community and was a site of the Peabody Coal Company.
“There used to be seven different grocery stores,” Shellie said, noting that the town has two banks, a restaurant — the Farmhouse Kitchen — and a hospital in addition to other businesses.
The Unells go back and forth to Sweden to visit his parents and their oldest son, 26, who lives there. Their younger son, 23, attends the University of Central Missouri at Warrensburg, and their daughter, 19, graduated last year from Appleton City High School and attends Neosha County Community College in Kansas. All three children have dual citizenship and are bi-lingual, Shellie said.
She and Jonas also consider themselves as belonging to both countries, and joke that they speak “Swenglish” at home.
“We don’t feel we chose one country over the other,” Shellie said. “We say we have two homes.”
For more information, go to the 4th Street Fika Facebook.
