Early Roots

In 1776, my great-great-great-great grandparents were married in the mountainous Alsace region of France. Later in the 1700’s, my Amish and Mennonite ancestors immigrated to America to escape the religious persecution they were experiencing in Switzerland and Germany. My great-grandparents ended up in the Amish settlement of Holmes County, Ohio, where I was born and raised.

As the youngest of five in a Mennonite family, I spent my growing up years on a 50-acre dairy farm in Ohio’s Amish country. Life was simple, the work was hard, and most of my contact with ‘the English people’ was limited to weekly trips to our small-town grocery store. While our culture forbid television and radios, my father did subscribe to a daily newspaper which I eagerly devoured to get a view of the outside world. 

I learned the daily rhythms of the simple life by working in the fields and barn with my father and helping my mother prepare meals in the kitchen. School was a beautiful reprieve, although I was only permitted to attend through 8th grade, as was typical in our conservative Mennonite community. But my hunger for learning never diminished, and I educated myself through extensive reading, and, in my teen years, by traveling through Europe.

At the age of 23, I left the Mennonite church and went on to marry my husband, who had also left the Mennonite upbringing of his youth. We settled on the family farm where our three children were born and raised, and then in 2007 we moved to North Carolina.

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Dreaming Big

In 2017, I started a bakery with our oldest daughter, Frances Natalie. With $3000 and the Kitchen Aid mixer my mother gave me for my 30th birthday, we rented a basement kitchen at Beta Verde outside Winston-Salem where we baked our heritage recipes. Every Saturday, we sold our baked goods at Cobblestone Farmer's Market and in various other pop-ups throughout the city.

Three and a half years and over 500 pop-ups later, we opened our bakery café in West End on December 4, 2020, carrying on the baking traditions passed down through many generations of our heritage.

Today, our kitchen has doubled in size to accommodate growth and production, and we have added a market space with additional seating in the lower level of the café. One day someone came up to me and asked. "Did you ever think your dream would turn into all this?"

I honestly could not have imagined it. But am so grateful it did.

Thank you to our wonderful community for the love you show us daily. Thank you to the most incredible team who bake and serve and smile and cook and love each other so well. And thanks to our family for the constant encouragement and to God, who gave us grace for it all.

— Naomi, Co-Owner & Founder

Prior to establishing the bakery, Naomi worked as a Project Coordinator for The Reckoning International, organizing relief efforts and philanthropic outreach in the United States and globally. Natalie attended the Art Institute of Charlotte and studied fashion in Paris and Milan before working as a retail manager and a fashion buyer. 

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