Amber
The Original Study
The Study is named after a real room. It still exists, it's my dad's room, filled with all of his favorite things. NASCAR memorabilia on the walls. Classic rock always playing. An old typewriter on a big wooden desk, buried under stacks of magazines and papers. He's always been a numbers guy, so even our road trips were planned down to the mile and the penny. As a kid, that room felt like the kind of place you weren't supposed to touch, but you couldn't help wanting to spend time in it anyway. It had character. It had stories. I wanted to build a place that felt the same way.
We moved to Garretson with plans to reopen our family's flower farm. But the longer I spent downtown, the clearer it became: this town didn't need another flower farm. It needed a third place. Somewhere families, couples, locals, and visitors could actually sit down and spend time together. Not long after, I met Abigail Lexon through the Main Avenue Revitalization Committee, and we realized we were both chasing the same idea for downtown. When she invited me to join her in the historic Wangness Building, everything fell into place. We got the keys on June 1st, turned the space over in a few short weeks, and opened our doors June 19th, right in time for Jesse James Days. Ambitious timeline. Worth every bit of it.
The menu is personal, too. Growing up, cookie skillets were a tradition in our house, the kind of dessert that shows up when people gather, gets passed around the table, and somehow always disappears before anyone admits how much of it they ate. That's the whole idea behind our cast iron desserts. Warm, shared, a little messy, made for sitting down instead of grabbing and going. Between that and the hand-dipped ice cream and fresh waffle cones, the menu stays intentionally simple. We'd rather do a handful of things really well than a hundred things just okay.
This is still early for The Study, the keys are barely a season old, and I like it that way. I want the room to keep collecting its own history the way my dad's study did: new flavors finding their way onto the menu, more of the cast iron program made right here in the building alongside Quartzite Coffeehouse, more objects with stories, more regulars who consider a booth "theirs." The room will keep changing. The feeling won't. A little forbidden. Completely encouraged.
I cant wait to see you here,
owner
meet
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Amber Meyer is the owner of The Study, and most days, you'll find her behind the counter, in the middle of it. Her background is in hospitality, going back to 2004: serving, bartending, managing, learning every side of what makes a room work. When Amber and her family moved to Garretson, the plan was to reopen their flower farm. But the more time she spent downtown, the more she realized the town wasn't missing flowers. It was missing a place to gather, a spot where families could unwind after a ball game, where couples could choose dessert over another dinner reservation, where friends could catch up without watching the clock.
At the same time, Amber was carrying a much more personal idea, a room from her childhood that never quite left her. Her dad's study: classic rock on repeat, NASCAR memorabilia covering the walls, an old typewriter buried under magazines and road-trip itineraries planned down to the penny. It felt forbidden in the way only a kid's favorite room can, the kind of space you weren't quite allowed in, but couldn't stay out of either. The Study became the place where those two ideas met. Her years in hospitality shaped the kind of service she believes in, genuine, unhurried, generous. Her childhood gave the room its feeling. Garretson gave her the place to build it, inside the historic Wangness Building, alongside Quartzite Coffeehouse, in a space the community already loved. Today, Amber runs The Study alongside her husband Kyle and their three boys, with the same instinct that started it all: build something with character, make people feel like they belong there, and let the desserts be the reason everyone stays a little longer than planned.
