After 25 years of serving hot beverages to familiar faces and friends, Steven Baker, owner of Nibor’s Coffee in Brodheadsville, has closed his drive-thru.

If Baker’s customers traveling through still want to get a cup of joe, they will no longer be driving up to Nibor’s Coffee window - it will be a Dunkin’ Donuts window.

“Basically the letter said my lease would be terminated in 30 days, and at first I was upset. I thought it might be a ploy to raise the rent, but when I found out it was going to be a Dunkin’ Donuts, I understood. They will pay a lot more rent than I could,” he said.

The only thing Baker wishes is that the landlord would have given him more notice that the lease would not be renewed.

“Especially because the day the landlord handed me the letter, five days had already passed since the date on the 30-day notice. It doesn’t leave me much time to get everything done, and the weather and all the snow makes it more difficult,” Baker said.

Friends, faces and memories

On a cold day in January 1996, Nibor’s Coffee, housed in a small trailer in a parking lot in Brodheadsville, opened for business and became a community fixture for 25 years.

Over the years, even though the customers were at his drive-thru window for just minutes every day, some of faces turned into friends.

He said he didn’t think closing Nibor’s would become such a big deal. “When it began to blow up on Facebook, I didn’t know what to think. I was really surprised.”

So many people came the last day to say goodbye. Baker was so busy he didn’t stop from the time he opened until sometime in the afternoon.

“I didn’t even get time to eat my breakfast or lunch,” he said.

Wondering how he would feel when the last customer finally pulled away from his small trailer, the place he has worked for so many years, he said, “I was surprised. I thought I would be all sad and down, but I was heartened by so many customers saying they will follow me wherever I go.”

Baker will soon be serving his devoted followers at the Nibor’s Coffee storefront next to the district magistrate’s office on Route 209. The store was closed this past year due to the pandemic, but he plans to have it up and running by Feb. 8.

When asked about whether the business name came from a family name or special blend of coffee, he laughed and said, “Well we talked about a lot of names, but they didn’t seem right and some were too long to fit on any sign.”

Then his daughter came home from school with a phonics assignment and somehow the lesson turned to writing your name backward.

“We all spelled our names backward. My wife Robin’s name spelled backward is Nibor. For some reason we all agreed it would be the perfect name for our business,” Baker said.