ENID—Seeking a restaurant with a view in Northwest Oklahoma?
Barnstormers is the place for you.
People from across Oklahoma along with out-of-staters fly in or drive in to have breakfast at this café inside Enid’s Woodring Regional Airport.
The idea for a café at the airport was actually born out of a necessity to employ the staff of Marilyn K’s after it closed its doors at the end of October 2008, according to Barnstormers’ owner Jamie Fournier.
Longtime cook and restauranteur Marilyn Bell, who had been operating the café named Marilyn K’s in Continental Tower North since 1996, decided two months prior that she was retiring.
At that time, Continental Resources announced its plans to turn the café into a cafeteria for employees and close it to the public, according to an article in the Enid News & Eagle in August 2008. (The oil and gas giant began transitioning its headquarters from Enid to Oklahoma City less than three years later.)
“Marilyn is a friend of mine,” Fournier said, and she helped out in the restaurant some as well as other café spots in Enid.
So when the announcement came that Continental Resources would assimilate the space into a cafeteria rather than leasing the space to another restaurant owner, “the girls (staff at Marilyn K’s) had nowhere to go,” Fournier said. She knew she had to do something.
“It took time to find a building for a restaurant,” she said. She came across a tiny 1950s-era building at the Enid airport she could lease from the city of Enid.
This breakfast nook—named for stunt pilots who were famous for their aerobatics in open fields after World War I—opened right at the new year in 2009.
“I couldn’t have done it without them,” Fournier said, referring to the former Marilyn K’s employees who rotate as cooks, waitresses, and cleanup crew.
“The day we opened it was unbelievable,” she said. The airport manager had told her she was crazy to open a restaurant at the airport, thinking no one would show. He was wrong.
“We went straight to Sears and bought freezers,” Fournier said to accommodate the foot traffic. The building barely had enough electricity to power the appliances; at the time, she said, they had five fridges and six freezers on extension cords.
Ten years later Barnstormers got a new building which is the current spot it’s housed in now.
Serving up more than food
Fournier said they serve about 100 people a day not including the to-go orders.
The nearby Koch Fertilizer plant east of the airport is the biggest supporter of the restaurant outside of the charter and Vance Air Force Base pilots. Then there are the regulars who have their designated seats, many from Enid and the surrounding rural communities, alongside hunting parties, visitors to Woodring Wall of Honor, civic clubs and other groups.
“Our employees know each customer’s name. We have 80% of the customers’ phone numbers. They’re our family,” Fournier said, so they will check on them if they’ve not been in for a while. Many times the regulars are standing outside the door at 7 a.m. waiting for the restaurant to open.
Many of the menu items are holdovers from Marilyn K’s, such as the Reubens and chicken salad sandwiches, both of which come on the homemade bread that is made the same way Marilyn K’s loaves were. Fournier makes between 10 to 15 loaves a day.
And then there are the pies that also are based on Marilyn K’s recipes.
Every day, Fournier said, they sell slices of homemade pie along with three or four full pies. Every Monday they bake eight to start the week; they baked 62 pies that had been ordered for Thanksgiving, which about did them in.
“There’s just the four of us,” said Billie Neathery, who has been managing Barnstormers for Fournier since 2010. Melissa Hoffman and Sheila Cservak are the newest staff members at eight years and two years, respectively. Part-timer Kelly Kirkpatrick comes in as the team’s dishwasher.
“We will keep doing the same thing we are doing because it works,” Neathery said, and customers sitting around listening to the interview agreed.
The consensus was they’d keep coming back because of the large portions, smiling faces, and wonderful atmosphere.
Barnstormers, 1026 S. 66th, Enid, is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the third Saturday of the month seasonally during the monthly Fly-In (usually April to October) from 7:30-10 a.m. Follow on Facebook.com/enidbarnstormers for the special of the day. Call (580) 234-9913 to make a pie order or to-go order; if that line is busy, customers can also call (580) 541-4978.
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Photo credit: Billy Hefton
See the article and photos in full-color in the March-April 2026 edition of ETown: etownmagazine-cnhi.newsmemory.com