Busy as a bee

One minute, Lee Medders was having breakfast with her husband at The Buzz Cafe in Benton, and the next minute, she owned it. Or at least that’s how it seemed.

“The staff was busy that morning,” Medders recalls. “I’d worked in restaurants and knew how to do everything, and I offered to help.” The server was grateful and called over the owner, Mary Jane Graham. “It turned out that she was my husband’s first boss. He worked for her at Bonanza Steakhouse when he was 16.”

A couple of months later, Graham called Medders and asked if she’d like to buy the cafe. That was 18 years ago, and The Buzz Cafe is still buzzing.

From the beginning, Medders wanted to offer fresh food to her customers. “The vegetables don’t come from a bag,” she says. “We cut them up fresh each morning.”

She also buys local seasonal fruits and vegetables and adds them to almost everything — salads, soups and sandwiches. “We experiment all the time,” Medders says. “We now have about 30 soups we offer throughout the year.”

A few items that previous owners created have been left untampered with, partly because they’re delicious, and partly because Medders believes strongly in consistency. She doesn’t want her customers to arrive for lunch only to find that something they love has been removed from the menu.

Medders’ connection with her customers is one reason why the cafe is packed with regular customers nearly every day. “We have little notes taped behind the counter,” Medders confides. “The notes read ‘Dana salad’ or ‘Lisa panini,’ for example, because that’s what Dana or Lisa orders each time they come in.”

Medders and her staff, some of whom have worked at The Buzz for more than a decade, banter about humorous episodes that come up frequently during the lunchtime rush. “Customers who are regulars have their favorite menu items, and sometimes they forget exactly what the sandwich or meal is called,” she says. “I have a great memory for faces, so I know what they’re going to order when I’m there, but when I’m gone, it can create a bit of chaos.”

So, the last time Medders was headed out of town, the staff created a sign that read, “Medders is on vacation. Please know what you eat.”

Medders and the staff love their customers, and Medders says she feels lucky that everyone is so kind and friendly. “When it starts to quiet down,” she explains, “we enjoy chatting with the customers, and a lot of times they hang out and talk about whatever might be going on in town that day.”

Customers also have helped create some of the menu items. One sandwich is listed on the menu as the Sidekick, named after two girls who work at the courthouse across the street and call each other their sidekicks. Medders says the girls, along with several other customers and the staff, “created” the sandwich by requesting a few tweaks to a menu item, and now the new sandwich is one of The Buzz’s more popular lunch offerings: a turkey and bacon sandwich made with sliced apples, Swiss cheese and mango chutney.

Paninis are also popular lunch options. Each is named after a town in Italy and, according to Medders, are basically built starting with the sauces: avocado poblano ranch, pesto/mayo, mango chutney and others. Along with a variety of cheese and vegetables, paninis are made with roast beef, chicken, turkey, corned beef or ham. There is also a vegetarian option.

Most people aren’t able to slip away without an after-meal treat. A glass case near the register allows tantalizing views of whatever is available that day, whether it’s white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, limoncello cheesecake, salted caramel brownies with pretzel crust or butter toffee pecan cookies.

Lemon bars are available every day simply because Medders has a customer who buys them every day. Cappuccino chocolate chip muffins have been offered for more than two decades because several customers stop by each morning to purchase them for breakfast.

Alongside an array of dozens of teas and coffees for sale, local elementary children are allotted an entire bookshelf for their artwork — most recently, miniature superhero sculptures and comic books that the children have written and illustrated. Paintings by local artists hang on rustic, antique doors; they add decor, and it’s another way to display art for sale.

People who live in Franklin County know that Benton was once home to sisters of two famous people — Beatle’s member George Harrison and actor John Malkovich. Medders got to know Malkovich’s sister, Becky, after taking over ownership of The Buzz.

“Becky started bringing me mugs from places where she’d traveled,” Medders explains. “We hung them along the upper ledge of the wall on one side of the cafe. Before long, other customers started bringing them in, and now we have mugs from all over the world, as well as from every state, except Delaware.”

Not long ago, a customer brought back not only a mug, but a story that’s one of Medders’ favorites. “With all of the different food served at The Buzz, our chicken salad and our bread pudding are customer favorites,” Medders says. “Someone will be traveling through town who hasn’t been here in 10 years, and the first thing they ask is, ‘Do you still have that delicious chicken salad?’” Medders adds that former owners came up with the recipes, served since the restaurant was founded in 1998, and she continues to offer both.

The story? The customer had been traveling somewhere in the southern part of the U.S. and had stopped for lunch at a cafe. After enjoying her meal, she asked about the bread pudding — did they serve it, and if so, how good was it? “It’s good,” replied the server, “but if you’re ever in southern Illinois, make sure you go by a cafe called The Buzz in Benton. They have the best bread pudding I’ve ever eaten.”