Family First, Good Food Second
STORY By abby audenino
Front windows shattered by gunshots. The nose of a car buried in the side of the building, causing part of it to collapse. These are just some of the things that Eddie Kowalski had to endure during the first few years of Lola’s being open on Washington Street in Poughkeepsie.
“There was always something happening here in the first three to five years,” Kowalski laughed. “Everyone was telling me to move, and I was like ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m already here, and I’m not scared.’”
Lucky for Kowalski, things looked up rather quickly.
Kowalski opened Lola’s in 2005 to provide a space where customers could get healthy food on the go. He was in his early-30s and had young kids at the time. Kowalski decided to open Lola’s in response to what he calls the “fast-food epidemic.”
“Our mission is to provide a healthy alternative to what I consider the fast-food epidemic. Back then, the area had a lack of options for healthy food, so I thought that if I started a sandwich place where I was able to get food out quickly and reasonably priced, that I would fill a void in the area,” Kowalski said.
What may have started as a sandwich place blossomed into much more. Lola’s has an additional location in New Paltz and Kowalski rebranded fine-dining restaurant Crave into the traditional neapolitan pizzeria, Lolita’s, in 2018.
“For 50 years this location was a family-run Italian deli, and they closed in the early 1990s because of a fire. I think what I did was filled the void of an independent, family-style run restaurant,” Kowalski said.
In New Paltz, the situation was a little different for Lola’s. In the village, there is a large concentration of restaurants in a very small space, but Kowalski said that many of these spots are “ethnic-specific.”
“There’s a lot of Mexican and a lot of pizza places, but there really wasn’t anything that did a little bit of everything, so I thought it was the perfect spot to put a Lola’s,” Kowalski said.
While Lola’s may be expanding now, Kowalski likes to remember his humble beginnings in Poughkeepsie. As a teenager, he worked at Assenza’s Deli, which ironically was in the same building that Lola’s currently resides in. “I think what people don’t know is that I’ve been rooted in this area forever,” Kowalski said.
One of the things he learned while working at Assenza’s was the importance of good customer service, and to this day, he believes that’s the most vital part of running a restaurant.
“The best compliment I could ever get is how friendly the staff is,” Kowalski said. “Having good service and trying to make everyone feel like they’re a part of our family is what we shoot for.”
Illustration by Amanda Nessel
Between all three places, Kowalski employs about 65 people and doesn’t have much employee turnover. In Poughkeepsie, the front of the house staff is older, while in New Paltz, the staff mostly consists of college students and has an overall younger workforce. Despite these gaps in age and positions in life, all of the employees get along really well and function as a work family. Kowalski also greatly values a work/life balance, which is why he offers weeks of vacation per year and closes on holidays so his staff has time to spend with their families.
When Lola’s first opened back in 2005, Kowalski had a lot more free time to chat with the customers. Now, he’s so busy he rarely gets a chance to get out into the cafe area. Regardless of this, he says that one of the things he values most is the sense of community that he feels with the customer base.
“A lot of the people that came here 18 years ago still come here today, so you know their kids, you’ve seen them have life moments. My favorite part is the strong sense of community and the strong sense of family,” Kowalski said.
Speaking of customer base, Lola’s has been tied to Marist College for as long as they’ve been open. Back in 2005, there were fraternity houses located near Lola’s, and because of this, the core demographic was mostly college guys. Each year it was a new group coming through, but Kowalski says that the tipping point for Lola’s was when the female students at Marist found out about the cafe.
“That was our tipping point,” Kowalski laughed. “When the females at Marist started coming here, my Marist clientele probably jumped to about 35%, it was huge.”
Before long, Lola’s started accepting Marist Money, and business continued to snowball from there; many of the sports teams started making trips to the cafe and putting in orders for catering. Since then, Kowalski has forged countless relationships with members of the Marist community, from students to athletes and coaches.
“We’re pretty connected to Marist. Anytime the students need to do interviews or media projects or advertising for the sports teams, I’m always willing to help,” Kowalski said.
Lola’s menu is vast and offers everything from sandwiches, salads, vegetarian bowls and soups. All of the items on the menu are made with locally sourced ingredients, and Lola’s has relations with a multitude of farms in the Hudson Valley.
While the menu is expansive, if you ask Kowalski what the most popular item on the menu is, he’ll tell you it’s the peanut noodles. “We sell an enormous amount of spicy peanut noodles,” he laughed.
Looking to the future, Kowalski is grateful to be able to continue to serve the Hudson Valley with healthy, locally sourced food through Lola’s and Lolita’s.
“After 18 years, everyone knows what we’re about here,” he said. “We’re just a bunch of people who enjoy each other.”
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography by Danielle Bonafede, Chris Smith & Anthony Cortez