Business Q&A | Out-of-the-way Aaronsburg Inn just the right spot for family business

Jack and Jane Van Heyst fell in love in 1987, but it took 21 years for them to fall head over heels for what is now the family business.

The Van Heysts bought the Aaronsburg Inn in 2008 and kept the bed-and-breakfast running at full speed.

The B&B, at 100 E. Aaron Square, was the right fit for the family at an opportune time.

Q: You bought this in 2008. Why?

Jack: It was already a B&B, and that was exactly our idea for it, too. I was getting ready to go back to work in the bar and restaurant business, and I’d been out of it for a little bit. I was interviewing and sending resumes around, and this was coming up for auction years ago. I suggested that to Jane, instead of me going back into the bar and restaurant business, which would have its perks and its drawbacks. I asked her if she’d want to run a B&B, and I thought she’d tell me I was crazy. Sure enough, she didn’t say that.

Jane: That’s right. And when this came up for auction I was pregnant with our fourth child. For both of us to work in State College would have been difficult, because our older children were getting into activities. That would have made things more of a challenge. Jack loves this kind of thing — working around people, cooking for them — and this made a lot of sense for us.

Q: Are you the driving force then, Jack?

Jane: Yep, he won’t let ’em do anything. (laughs)

Jack: Not with everything. She does all the paperwork. There’s taxes, hotel taxes, things that have to be managed in that sense, and that’s not my strong suit, but it’s one of her many strong suits. I always describe myself as “Chief, Cook, Bottle Washer.” We have a good friend, Pat, and she’s the assistant innkeeper. She works part-time for part of the year. I do everything from shopping to the repairs to the lawn work to the cooking. I’m the chief inn operator essentially.

Q: How is this different from being in the bar and restaurant industry?

Jack: Bar, hotel, restaurant, lodging — wherever this falls, they have a lot of similarities. It’s all about your clientele and what they’re there for. A bar, it’s a place to meet up, hang out, maybe hook up, drink, but the idea for a good bar is to make a place that’s nice to do that whether it’s dancing in a nightclub or in a lounge that’s a little quieter or intimate. The idea is still the same. Whatever they come for, the drinks and music, that should be good. It’s all about making the customer happy with what they want. Here it’s a bed and breakfast. The whole philosophy here is that the rooms should be immaculately clean, the food should be really good and the rest of it’s just window dressing.

Q: We’re in a secluded area, so why do people come all the way out here?

Jack: Sometimes because there’s no rooms left in State College. (laughs) That’s fine because what we do is once we have them once we try to keep them (coming back). Even if they had to come here out of necessity, we do everything we can to make them realize with the price, the cleanliness and food that that 25-minute drive to State College really isn’t bad. So, we have a lot of football guests in the fall and winter that are repeat guests that have come here for years.

Q: When are you the busiest?

Jane: It’s actually the summer, because Woodward Camp is down the street. We pull in people from all over the world. We meet people from everywhere. They come, drop the kids off, stay the week and come the next week and pick the kids up. We get a lot of business, because people are always going there. Some people make it their vacation.

Jack: Because we are close enough, people would assume football season we’re the busiest. Woodward Camp is like having 12 straight football weeks. It didn’t used to be that way, but it’s grown.

Q: Why try to make it work out here instead of a more populated area?

Jane: We didn’t know (if it would work out here), and we couldn’t possibly know.

Jack: What we knew is that we’d lived in Aaronsburg for a couple years, and it was very nice. What we also knew was that having left State College, we left friends that when we packed up and moved out they were kind of like, “OK, please keep in touch.” ... We’re 24 miles away from Beaver Stadium, but it’s not really that far. It offered things we were looking for as a family. It’s slowly growing, and we get more guests every year. We had two weeks to decide it’d be a decent idea to the time we did it. We had two weeks to get as much information as we could.

Q: I take it, it was a hectic two weeks?

Jane: Very hectic. I was about ready to have a baby, we bought this and we didn’t necessarily know what we were doing yet. It was also exciting, because it was different and because this is really up Jack’s alley. We found a lot of pros going into it.

Q: What’s challenging about doing this?

Jack: We always feel behind, because we have high expectations for ourselves with this, our kids and everything in our life that takes time and work. It doesn’t really bother us. The most challenging thing for me is just the physical upkeep of it. I want it to look perfect top to bottom.

What I thought would be challenging that isn’t is when I read books and so many had sections dedicated to one complaint after another. That’s what made me most anxious, because as much as I like to take care of people and do my best for them, if someone has over-the-top complaints or can’t be made happy at all I’d just have very low tolerance for it. I came from the bar business, and it was wonderful to manage because they always say the customer is right. In the bar business that’s not the case, and sometimes you get to toss people out on their keister. I certainly didn’t expect to be anything like a bouncer here, but I knew if I tried my best and you were set on being unhappy I’d return your money and tell you to rock and roll out of here. Nothing like that. We’ve had nothing but the nicest, friendliest people that enjoy themselves.

This story was originally published August 29, 2015 at 1:30 AM with the headline "Business Q&A | Out-of-the-way Aaronsburg Inn just the right spot for family business."