Woods Coffee Meridian

Woods calls this store Meridian, for the highway it sits on at West Stuart Road, and it serves the north end the way the chain's commuter stores do: a drive through first, a fireplace and seats inside for the ones who stay, and the full Woods menu of coffee the company roasts itself and pastries from its own scratch bakery. Woods is a Whatcom County family company, started in Lynden in 2002 when Wes and Diane Herman turned a homeschool business plan written with their four kids into a coffee shop, and it is still family run at about two dozen stores. Heading north on the Guide toward Lynden, where the company began, this is the Bellingham stop.