Cultivate Café embraces opposites. Its old west-style interior, complete with original wood, elk antlers on the wall, and saloon-style doors, seems to contradict the menu’s plentiful vegan options like non-dairy jalapeño “cheese” and fried jackfruit.

Owners and siblings Sky and Savanna Garnick laugh when satisfied vegan and meat-eating customers alike point out this intriguing contradiction. “That’s who my family is,” Savanna says. “We are Jackson locals, we are cowboys, but we are also actors and artists. We are creatives, and Sky and I are vegans.”

The family she refers to is a large one—Savanna and Sky are two of eight siblings. The Garnick family runs the town’s playhouse, and they are also dude ranchers. Before opening Cultivate, Sky lived in New York City where he worked as a barista at Bluestone Lane on the Upper East Side and fell in love with “coffee culture.” Savanna is a health coach and avid cook and baker who previously managed Jackson’s Lotus Café.

After Lotus Café shut down in 2018, Savanna and Sky began to dream of opening a vegan-friendly, health conscious café with a high-end coffee program. They realized the perfect location was actually the building they grew up in: Jackson Hole Playhouse. The playhouse is seasonal, and its restaurant didn’t operate during the day. Their mother, Vicki Garnick, was searching for ways to make the business—and the oldest standing building in Jackson—more usable.

Cultivate Café is now open year-round for breakfast and lunch, and is a cozy spot to enjoy a fresh-pressed juice, raspberry almond thumbprint cookie, rosehip tea, turmeric latte, or a shot of espresso. Sky and Savanna make their own oat, cashew, hemp, and almond milk to cut down on
packaging waste and are constantly trying to find more ways to reduce their environmental impact.

They do serve meat, but it fits with their ethos. Everything is local when possible and chosen for both ethics and sustainability. For example, the beef burger with garlic aioli features beef from the Lockhart Cattle Company, a family-run operation the Garnicks know well. They grew up raising steers in the local 4-H club alongside the Lockhart kids.

It’s possible to visit the café, order the fried chicken and waffles and an affogato—coffee with ice cream—without ever realizing the restaurant is geared toward vegans. The café aspires to truly cater to everyone by embracing the compelling opposites that have come to define both the Garnick family and Jackson community as a whole.