Michelle Nicholson turned plans for a bakery into four businesses that together, make her campus a destination location.
Nicholson started her The Flour Girl bakery business selling sourdough bread from her front porch five years ago and now she has a popular “campus” on her town’s Main Street – a full-service bakery, expanded cafe, event space and soon a country store within feet of each other.
Local customers from Hebron flock to the campus, lining up 45 minutes ahead of time on Sundays for her secret recipe cinnamon rolls and to the restaurant where sandwiches are made on the freshest breads an rolls possible, made just a few feet away,
When the country store opens in November customers will be able to shop for hand-crafted gifts, candles and heat and serve meals made from scratch.
The Flour Girl Cafe (Courtesy)
Already she has regulars who come from Boston and Rhode Island to make an outing out of it for food and shopping. Most visitors do a little of everything when they are there, Nicholson said.
“It’s almost more of a destination,” she said of her compound with signature pink doors. “It’s a little bit of an outing as opposed to a stop.”
Nicholson, 40, never imagined she would become a baker, but said she could have seen herself in the restaurant business, as she grew up in the field because her parents owned a restaurant in New Hampshire. As a child she would design imaginary restaurants and create menus, but baking was nowhere.
She received an MBA degree and worked in the business field for several years before the bread business. It was on a tour of King Arthur Flour Co., in Vermont that peaked the interest in sourdough.
After the visit, she taught herself how to bake it.
The loaves in front of her house during the covid pandemic flew so fast she soon moved to a commercial kitchen and in 2021 found a space to build the bakery. While that was being built, a cafe next door became available, so she took that space and opened “The Flour Girl Cafe” even before the bakery was ready.
The cafe is now in a bigger and sometimes referred to as a restaurant, but still called “The Flour Girl Cafe.”
“The cafe was so popular we were out of space so we took another building near it,” she said.
Then, as the cafe – now a sort of restaurant – moved to a bigger space, that became an event space where they hold everything from private parties to workshops like broom making for Halloween.
With some shuffling the “The Flour Girl” campus was born.
Nicholson says she’s going for the “small, New England vibe” and the renovated buildings are ones that were important historically in town, one was once a parsonage, another once a post office.
The bakery, famous for its sourdough bread products and frosted cinnamon rolls only available on Sundays beginning at 9 a.m. is also a full-service bakery, selling scones, brownies, cookies, pastry and cakes made to order.
She said people start lining up for the cinnamon rolls at 8:15 a.m. They are frosted warm and by hand, which is quite uncommon, she said.
The restaurant, opened recently in its new form, serves breakfast and lunch. Some menu items include popular paninis, sandwiches, including a pickle grilled cheese, hot honey fried chicken, burgers, salads and homemade soups that rotate such as chicken pot pie, broccoli/cheddar, chicken noodle, sausage and potato. There’s only one available each day.
She said the bread and rolls are amazingly fresh, sometimes walked over from the bakery right out of the oven.
“I think it’s something very few places can say,” she said. “It’s unique.”
The general store, slated to open in November, will carry vintage items, local crafts and other “gifts,” she said.
Some of the heat and eat prepared foods they will sell out of the country store include: quiche, chicken pot pie, beef stroganoff, Cape Cod chicken, and honey/garlic tenderloin tips and soups.
“We’re really trying to mirror that country store feel,” she said of the business at 1214 Main St. where there is plenty of parking in back. “Building our business is so much fun because people are very excited,” and it keeps their team excited.
The Flour Girl Cafe (Courtesy)
Nicholson said they were voted as having the best cinnamon roll in all of New England by Yankee Magazine and her business was recently chosen as a top 100 growth accelerators by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
