Business Buzz: New restaurant in Frenchtown, Lunar New Year, Lincoln newspaper to close

There’s a new restaurant in Frenchtown. Montana Brunch Company opened at 16862 Beckwith Street in Frenchtown three weeks ago. Located at the front of the same business plaza as Old Bull Brewing, the eatery was started by local couple Kevin and Stefanie Krasovich.

They’ve got made-to-order burritos, breakfast sandwiches, beignets (a French deep-fried pastry), medallion pancakes, a full espresso bar and a full liquor license. There’s a seating area inside with large windows, but they’ve also got a drive-thru for food and beverages. They can even serve cocktails like Bloody Marys and Caesars to customers who pull up to the drive-thru. The lids are taped down so the drink can be safely consumed at home.

“We’re excited,” said Stefanie Krasovich on Tuesday as she was running the front of the house.

She said they’ve gotten great feedback from the community so far, but they are waiting on some equipment.

A Lunar New Year celebration will be held on Saturday, Feb. 1 at the Missoula Public Library from 11 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. in the Cooper room. Hosted by Here Montana and the Montessori Plus International school, the event will be for 2025, The Year of the Snake.

“We’ll celebrate the biggest holiday of the year with free family-friendly activities such as paper lantern and origami-making,” the organizations wrote. “Special performances will include traditional dances, gamelan-playing and more.”

The event is free and open to the public.

Decker Truck Line has closed its Missoula terminal, which was located near the Wye. The news was first reported by NBC Montana news station. The station reported that about 18 employees were offered to either relocate to Iowa, where the trucking company is located, or lose their jobs.

“Due to an ever-changing freight network and targeted growth areas in other regions of the country, Decker Truck Line’s traffic volume through the Missoula area no longer requires a remote terminal,” the company said in a statement.

The community newspaper in the town of Lincoln will be closing permanently unless the owners can find a buyer. Roger Dey, the owner of the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch, posted a lengthy explanation about the situation on the newspaper’s website, BlackfootValleyDispatch.com.

“I feel horrible about this decision, but it’s one I should have made back in 2022 when we stopped our print publication,” Dey wrote. “I seriously considered shutting it all down then, but felt a responsibility to keep the community informed if I could. And to be honest, too much of my identity was wrapped up in being the local ‘news guy.’ The simplest reason for this decision is we can no longer afford to keep paying for the news website, and I no longer have the drive to keep it updated.”

Dey said that the lifeblood of a news organization isn’t actually news, it’s traditionally been advertising income.

“Despite our efforts to improve the publication, expand our readership and maintain a high level of quality, which I think we did well for many years, we’ve always had a hell of a time attracting or keeping enough advertisers,” he said. “During most of our time with the BVD, the business hasn’t been particularly profitable, and we never made enough to put someone on payroll.”

The market for local news also evolved in ways he didn’t anticipate and wasn’t able to keep up with, Dey said.

“The COVID-19 pandemic in particular saw a major shift locally as more and more people turned to sites like Lincoln Live for advertising and local information (accurate or not),” Dey wrote. There is much more to his post, along with a history of the paper.