For these cousins, baking is better than shaking

You can’t see their faces, covered as they are with masks, but you can see and feel the optimism during this endless pandemic.

Their cafe in Dunbarton is freshly painted yellow on the outside, with yellow flowers all around. Inside, it’s bright and airy, with smooth wood and a fireplace and baked goods that widen your eyes and scream for a cup of coffee and a chair near a really big window.

It’s called the School Street Cafe, and it’s owned and operated by a pair of cousins – Carrie Hobi and Lindsey Andrews – who bonded through childhood, growing up together, playing together, dreaming together.

Hobi is the older partner, at 24. Andrews is 22. They each hit a fork in the road and chose the business path, investing their money and getting help from their families. They want to build a tradition in this postcard-like setting.

They opened for business in August.

“We always dreamed of owning our own bakery since we were about 10 years old,” Hobi said. “We hung out every day after school. We were baking together and we were two years apart and we did everything together.”

They grew up across the street from each other in Dunbarton. They served hot chocolate at their tea parties in grade-school. They went sledding together, camping, swimming on the Seacoast.

And they baked together, sometimes at their grandmother’s nearby home, creating a mixture of fun and learning, baking and business. It’s paid off thus far.

“It’s been a lot busier than we expected,” said Andrews, who’s in charge of the cafe’s social media pages. “We’ve gotten people to come who might not have come in normally. We’ve had a couple of families who are looking for houses in Dunbarton and they have been to the coffee shop.”

This dream is a family affair. Hobi’s husband of three years, Brandon Hobi, does the books for the cafe. He and Andrews’s longtime boyfriend, Aidan Koornneef, helped build and renovate, refurbishing counter tops and tables, painting walls, bringing in equipment, building a future.

Parents and grandparents helped as well. One grandmother in particular served as the lead baker during all those early sessions, supervisor of the two future businesswomen in one of three kitchens more than a decade ago.

Her name is Judy Andrews. I met her by accident during her daily walk around the center of town, in front of the School Street Cafe, blending into a scene that included a gazebo and the town offices and green leaves anxious to change.

I didn’t know she had helped build this foundation. I asked her if she had eaten there.

“Wonderful,” Judy said. “Baked goods made fresh. Of course, I might be a little biased.”

We got a good laugh out of that one. We also talked about the traditional peppermint cookies the three-person team made at Christmas time and continue to make today.

We talked about those early days, when the cousins dragged a stool in front of the countertop to reach the mixing bowl.

“They’d help with the ingredients,” Judy Andrews said, beaming. “They always wanted to open their own bakery.”

First, life’s dust had to settle. Lindsey Andrews graduated from Southern New Hampshire University last December. She got a degree in small business management and entrepreneurship. She took a temp job and worked at MG’s Farmhouse Cafe, the business she would later own.

Hobi worked as a nanny for five years. She got married and worked at MG’s as well. MG’s closed less than two years after it opened, an all-too-common happening since the COVID-19 chaos began seven months ago. The owners, though, had heard about the dream. The cousins’ dream.

“There was talk of someone opening up a coffee shop in town and we were excited for the opportunity to work there,” Hobi said in an email. “After the previous owners made the difficult decision to close the cafe earlier this year due to COVID-19 and other factors, they reached out to us asking if we were interested in taking it over as our own. We jumped at the opportunity.”

They knew it was a gamble. This is not a business-friendly climate, and these young women are just getting their feet wet in the business world.

As Lindsey said, “We thought for a couple of weeks and then said yes. We knew it was a risk. We talked about finances and that we would be investing our own money into the company and not knowing if it would succeed.”

To succeed, they both know regulars are needed. Like Theresa Francoeur, whose routine includes running errands and then stopping at the School Street Cafe for egg sandwiches. One for her and one for her son, an online student at UMass Lowell.

“Grocery shopping every Thursday morning,” Francoeur said. “Then here and then home, where I’ll wake up my son for school.”

The cousins brought their own style with them. Their brand, they called it. They made the lighting brighter. The colors, too.

Hobi prepares veggie wraps each morning, part of a daily routine of packing bag lunches and delivering them to local school teachers. Each bag, specially ordered, is marked with a name.

Their cinnamon rolls rise on Saturdays and are sold on Sundays. That’s a big hit. They’ve expanded their weekend schedule, closing at 2 p.m. on Fridays and Saturday and then re-opening at 6 p.m. for “fried dough night and apple crisp night,” Hobi said, “and people have responded to us doing something different.”

Their cakes and cookies and pies are displayed, some on platters under glass domes, others on plates, out in the open. Apple fritter bread, chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin cheesecake swirled brownies.

Creativity is needed. The times are dark, a sharp contrast to the bright optimism the cousins want you to feel, hear and see.

They’re counting on it.

“There was a lot of consideration that went into it,” Lindsey Andrews said. “There was family and finances, and there was our social lives to think about as well.

“But we took the offer because we thought we would regret it if we did not at least try.”