Making Toms River a Destination One Cookie at a Time

It’s early on a Monday morning, before seven. Kim Ratto is already at work. It may be early but she’s loving it. 

Ratto, along with her business partner and friend Helen Harris, is the proprietor of the , a bakery and restaurant on the corner of Washington and Hyers Streets.

“I love coming here,” she said.  “I’m up every day at 5:15 and I come in and I make the coffee and I wait for the first guy to walk through the door.”

Ratto had been following the routine since the business opened on Halloween night, 2009. Prior to that, Ratto had operated the , a successful coffee house that she opened across the street, on the corner of Washington and Main streets, and successfully operated until she became sick and had to sell off the business shortly thereafter. After combating her illness, Ratto felt the time was right to get back to business and for her that has meant serving the town she loves. 

Ratto, who was born in Little Rock, Ark. and moved with her family when she was a child in the early 1960s, remembers the Toms River of her youth with more than a hint of fondness. “It was a great town to grow up in,” she said. “I used to walk around downtown when I was a kid. There were lots of stores, things to look at. Charney’s, where is, was like a Staples – you could get pens and paper and envelopes. Woolworth’s had a revolving door and a little counter where you could get lunch.”

She described a picture that she owns of Main Street in the 1940s. It shows a quaint downtown with diagonal parking spots outside of bustling storefronts. The location which once held the Java Joint and now stands empty used to be a coffee shop. It looks like the heart of a community.

It is a vision that Ratto hopes to bring back to . “I have such high hopes for this town,” she said. “I did back in 1995. If I hadn’t gotten sick, if I hadn’t gotten leukemia, I never would have given that place up,” referring to the Java Joint.

“This place probably would have become a little Red Bank by now. There was a wave that started but unfortunately, I was too sick to hold on to it. There were new stores; there were 15 new businesses that opened up. There were people down here on Friday and Saturday nights, there were people down here at night during the week. I didn’t close up until 11 o’clock. The place was full, every night.”

She freely offered her thought why. “Because it was a place to go. It was a destination.”

A destination is what Ratto hopes becomes, once again. Toward that end, she hopes to reopen what was once a cornerstone of the downtown community, the Traco Theater. (see related story)

Her first step in achieving her dream for Toms River has been with the Cookie Cab. She struggled to recall the night the business opened. “It’s a blur. The night started but didn’t stop. You couldn’t make the coffee fast enough; the equipment couldn’t keep up. That and the hot chocolate.”

Since that auspicious beginning, Ratto and Harris have managed to stay true to what they wanted the Cookie Cab to be, even if their means of achieving it changed with time. Originally, the idea was to deliver oversized chocolate chip cookies, still warm, to customers’ homes in pizza boxes. “She’s flexible,” Harris said of Ratto as a business partner. “The business idea develops and you change.”

Popular demand has encouraged the two to reintroduce many of the sandwiches that were featured at the Java Joint. “I didn’t want to do sandwiches,” Ratto said, “but people kept asking. So now we do lunches.”

One idea that hasn’t changed is the atmosphere Ratto wanted for her business. It was a part of the original Java Joint and it is evident here. “Restaurants succeed if the people who run them work hard, maintain a level of quality, and make it a place that people want to come back to,” Ratto said, stressing the last point.

Her latest establishment is “kind of like a ‘Cheers,’” she said, referring to the television show about a neighborhood bar where everybody knows your name. “You come in here on Tuesday mornings; the place is full of people having breakfast. They all take to each other, [even though] they didn’t know each [previously]. But now it’s an every Tuesday morning thing. You get to know who they are and what their names are and people love to be recognized and called by their names.”

Paul Unkert, proprietor of a guitar business downtown and frequent habitué of the coffee shop thought Ratto has achieved a level of familiarity with her customers. “This is the most welcoming, homelike business in town. You walk through the front door and you feel like you’re in a friend’s house,” he said of the shop that he called “one of the little jewels in downtown Toms River.”

Harris, an artist who first met Ratto at the Java Joint when she asked to display some of her artwork there, marveled at Ratto’s ability to conjure up successful business ideas. Unlike some business owners who may get a good idea and then vacillate, “Kim gets an idea and then goes,” Harris said. “Risk is not included. She gets an idea and says ‘this is how we can do it.’ She doesn’t stop to calculate the disadvantages. That’s my end of the business. That’s what I do. I’m the balance.” It seems that the two have found a formula that works.

Glenn Foster, of Ocean Gate, stopped for his morning coffee on his way to work in Toms River. As he reached for his own coffee mug that he leaves hanging from a peg on the wall, he admitted he appreciated being greeted by a welcoming, smiling face rather than some bleary-eyed teen at a convenience store whose sole concern is when the shift is over. “It’s just nicer here,” he said.

With the enthusiasm of a modern-day P.T. Barnum, Ratto spoke of her hopes for the downtown area. “There has to be a reason for people to come downtown. I truly believe that we can get something going down here if we could just get it started.”

“It is such a beautiful downtown and it has such a rich history,” she continued. “I’d love to see Toms River become a destination. I’d love to see Toms River become a restaurant row. I’d love to see it covered in restaurants. If you put the restaurants in the culture will follow. If culture comes, then the retail will follow. Then, you’ll have the birth of a town again, you have it back.”

With a dose of self-deprecating humor, Ratto said “There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity. I may fall a little closer to the wrong side but I believe so strongly that these businesses would work.”

With a laugh, Unkert added, “My biggest problem is that I’ve become addicted to everything they have.”

Ratto smiled. “Do I love it? I love the people. I like to make people happy.”