After opening relatively quietly last month, Off the Trail Café in Green Bay is preparing to celebrate its official grand opening on Saturday, May 31, with a morning ceremony steeped in culture and community.
The Indigenous- and woman-owned café has already made a mark on the local food scene with a menu of gourmet sandwiches, cold-pressed juices, wellness shots, and traditional foods — all with an emphasis on health, accessibility, and community service.
“The support that we’ve gotten from our community and even our community neighbors has been just jaw-dropping,” said co-owner Apache Danforth. “It’s not just about selling sandwiches and making our quota. It’s really about building a community and providing access to healthy, fresh options.”
Located at 3120 South Packerland Drive on the Oneida Reservation, the café occupies a long-vacant retail space that Danforth and her co-owners — Jamie Betters, Jeremiah Danforth, and Brian Wilson — saw as an opportunity to bring something new and necessary to the community.
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Betters brings two decades of experience in Indigenous food systems to the venture, including work in food production, market analysis, and health-focused initiatives.
“Our aim is really to focus on food security and food insecurity so that it’s understanding that our community and surrounding communities have access to nutritional foods with less of an expense,” she said.
The café offers a rotating menu that will be expanded in phases. The current lineup features a breakfast menu including hot breakfast sandwiches, burritos, and creative offerings like pancake tacos and mini pancake bowls topped with berries and drizzles.
The drinks, however, have quickly become a signature.
“I did not… think that our community would embrace cold-pressed juices right off the bat,” Betters said. “We have a hard time keeping up with that production.”
Off the Trail aims to become more than a café. It’s also a hub for food education and empowerment. Betters and Danforth plan to offer community workshops on traditional foods, food preservation, and fermentation techniques. With a certified FDA food processing kitchen and a garden on-site, they envision a full seed-to-plate experience.
“We want to be that incubator. We want to be that hub,” Betters said. “So we’re not only in it for ourselves, but we want to also allow community members to grow into our space.”
That commitment has already landed them a $10,000 Indigenous Food Producers grant from the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition, and they’ll be contributing to the tribal Elder Box program — a partnership with Feeding America to deliver culturally appropriate, nutritious food to elders.
“For our business to be in those boxes, to collaborate with Feeding America and the coalition — it is extremely important to us,” Betters said.
The grand opening celebration will begin at 7:30 a.m. with a traditional tobacco burning ceremony led by cultural leader Bob Brown. A ribbon-cutting will follow, with invitations extended to chambers of commerce and community members from Green Bay, De Pere, and Ashwaubenon.
“We’re on the Oneida Reservation, but this is really a unique opportunity for us to meet our neighbors, and for them to meet us as well and our community,” Danforth said.
Off the Trail Café is open seven days a week — 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends — with occasional closures to accommodate family responsibilities. Updates, menu items, and event announcements can be found on their Facebook and Instagram pages.
