Kim Silsbee, 28, of Lillian is a student, has two full-time jobs and still finds the time to co-own and operate one of the most popular gathering places in Lillian, a place that she calls “my baby, pretty much.”

When you ask Silsbee how she manages, or how she built two successful businesses from the ground up before she turned 26, she said, “I never thought that I could do anything like this and I didn’t know what I was doing.”

On U.S. 98 in Lillian, just before you cross the line into Florida, the Lillian Café and Coffee House is the place to go for a cup of coffee, a delicious sandwich, a night of great music, or just to hang out with neighbors and tourists that are just passing through.

Silsbee describes her life’s work as a “quaint, laid back, eclectic, sweet and funky” establishment. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

Silsbee said she loves owning the café and enjoys the time she spends getting to know her customers, sitting on the front porch conversing with those gathered. She typically knows the names of all of her regulars, but she enjoys meeting the first-timers as well. “You get to meet a lot of different people,” she said.

Silsbee likes to think the Lillian Café has become a place that offers something more than coffee and music, but also offers a place to gather. She said she thinks Lillian needed that.

“The people in Lillian shaped this place. People said what they wanted, so we brought it here. We found out that the biggest need wasn’t for a coffee house. It was for a place for people to gather because there really aren’t many places around here. It is kind of like you almost get a reunion here sometimes,” Silsbee said.

A lot of her customers are regulars, but Silsbee also gets some customers who are just passing through. The Lillian Café now regularly has customers that stop in from Elberta, Foley, Perdido and Pensacola. She said, “Everybody comes here. It is just a little stop-through. They come, they’ll either hang out for a few minutes and have a beer or some people will be here all day. It just has something for everybody.” Unlike other places that are in a rush to give space to another customer, Lillian’s Café doesn’t rush you out the door once you finish your meal.

She couldn’t imagine Lillian without the café now.

What sets the Lillian Café apart from all of the rest of the establishments like it, according to Silsbee is the atmosphere of the place. Silsbee said, “It is still a really nice atmosphere, it is not like a rowdy bar or anything like that.” 

Of course, another alluring quality is the great food that the Silsbee offers at the Lillian Café. “The food is amazing, we have really good food,” she said. The café serves soups, sandwiches, hamburgers and hot dogs, and also serves coffee and alcohol. All of the bread served at the café comes from the Bread of Life Bakery in Pensacola. Combine the really great bread that they serve with really great meat and Silsbee said it equals “just fabulous sandwiches.”

Silsbee said the Reuben sandwich is her favorite, and also one of their bestsellers. “We make one of the best Reubens around. Anytime I go out to eat if I order a Reuben. It is just never as good because ours is gooey and yummy and hot and cheesy. It is just really good.”

Silsbee didn’t start out aspiring to own a café. Five years ago she finished a massage therapy program at the Florida School of Massage in Gainesville, Fla. and came back to Lillian and opened up a massage therapy business. She still has her massage therapy business, which she does during the day. At night, she usually walks next door for her second full-time job, running the café.

Silsbee said, surprisingly, that a massage therapy business and a café by day, bar by night actually complement each other quite well.

“It is great,” she said. “In the daytime when the massage is open it is a family restaurant, it is a family place so it is not a big deal. Musicians get a kick about playing on the massage steps.”

The idea for the café came to her a little more than three years ago after she started dating her future husband, George Silsbee.

“I knew I wanted to do something else. I really love the massage business, but I just felt like I needed to do something else also. I kind of got a little bored just doing that,” she said. But her original idea was not a café or bar, like it has become.

The Lillian Café was originally supposed to be an organic grocery store and coffee house. Once she started making plans, Silsbee decided “the grocery store would be really hard, so I went with the coffee shop because that was my passion anyways, that is what I wanted to do.”

“Now I know that the grocery store would have been a lot easier,” she said.

Putting the café together took Silsbee and her husband a year to open. They built and remodeled everything themselves and bought supplies as the money became available.

“We built it as we could. We didn’t get any loans or grants or anything like that. We did all the remodeling ourselves. Everything in there is new, ceilings, floors, walls, electrical, plumbing.”

“Every day after work and every weekend we got in there and just put our blood, sweat and tears into it,” Silsbee said. 

Silsbee had a lot of help starting her second business from her aunt, who owns Hub Stacy’s bar and restaurant in Pensacola. Silsbee said her aunt “Helped me through a lot of the opening trying to figure out what we needed.”

Her aunt gave her the recipes for four of her best selling sandwiches. Silsbee opened with those four, and has added a few other items to her menu as well.

When her aunt advised her to get her beer and wine license for a coffee shop, Silsbee was a little skeptical that she would need one since she only planned on selling coffee. She got the license anyway, and her little café turned into a fully-fledged bar by nightfall.

When the café first opened it was only open from 6 a.m-7 p.m. and only offered coffee, soups and sandwiches.

That all changed when a typo was published and Silsbee ended up with two guitar-toting musicians who showed up in her café ready for a picking session. After that night, Silsbee decided to have a jam session every Thursday.  

The once-a-week jam session has turned into music every night, every week. Three nights a week there are hired musicians, but there is also a karaoke night and an open mike night. Open mike night is also bring your own weenie night for a weenie roast on the open fire out front. Once she realized that the music sessions were attracting a lot of people Silsbee realized that there was really a need for good music in the area.

Silsbee said the music is probably the biggest draw, and every night the outdoor patio is packed.

Some of Silsbee’s favorite memories since she has opened the café took place around the bonfire in the wee hours of the morning. “Some of my best memories are sitting around the bonfire on cold winter nights when the musicians finish they bring their guitars and all come hang out and sit by the fire, have some beers, and hang out. Those are some of the best times here,” Silsbee said.

During the day, while Silsbee works as a massage therapist next door, she said that the café is “nice and family-oriented, but at night it is a bar with really good music.”

Right now, Silsbee would not change one thing about what she does everyday. Even though her schedule is busy as a massage therapist by day and she spends her nights and weekends running the Lillian Café.

In the future, Silsbee said the café may need more space, but for right now the cozy café is just perfect.

Right now, Silsbee said she would not change one thing about what she does every day. Even though her schedule is busy as a massage therapist by day and she spends her nights and weekends running the Lillian Café.

“I love what I am doing now. I have thought about I don’t know where my life may take me in the future, I am only 28 years old. I will definitely at some point open another place like this, I don’t know where, or when. Who knows where I will be when I am 40 years old, that is 12 years from now,” said Silsbee.

In the future, Silsbee said the café may need more space, but for right now the cozy café is just perfect.

“Maybe, if there is a need, we will go up and build a second story. I think a second story would be a lot of fun. We could do a lot of good stuff with that.”

Silsbee said she hopes the future will also see the café as being known as one of the only places that has music seven nights a week and “has an atmosphere that is really sweet and loving to come to and makes you feel at home. I definitely want it to always be small and sweet, where you get treated like family.”

Upcoming Events at Lillian Café and Coffee House

Oct. 22 the Lillian Café will host “Save the Ta-tas.” This event will be a fundraiser for breast cancer awareness. There will be music and food, a silent auction and a bake sale, along with the men of Lillian drag queen show.

Oct. 30 the Lillian Café will host a Halloween party, which Silsbee calls “a big bash.” Cash prizes will be given in a costume contest and there will also be musical entertainment.