Courtesy Debbie Buchanan
A fruit galette on a baking tin.
Buchanan will be making bread and sweet and savory pastries at the new cafe.
Customers will soon be able to smell coffee roasting and bread baking at 2021 Winnebago St., formerly home to the Arts + Literature Laboratory. Ever since A+LL moved to new digs at 111 S. Livingston St. in 2019, Gwen Shales and Kyle Johnson have wanted to make something out of the old industrial building.
Shales and Johnson own or co-own several businesses, including East Johnson Family Restaurant and Johnson Public House. They saw potential in the Winnebago Street location, in part to relocate and expand their coffee roasting arm, Kin-Kin Coffee, currently at 151 E. Badger Road.
Shales and Johnson toured the building and discussed possible collaboration that could pair baking and coffee roasting. Plans fell through, though, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
About two years ago, through their involvement with Mint Mark, they learned that its then-pastry chef, Debbie Buchanan, was interested in acquiring a retail space where she could sell her homemade bread. Finally plans to open Rise Baking Company, a full service cafe that will combine their coffee and baking interests, are coming together.
Buchanan has worked in the service industry for most of her life, but started baking sourdough bread in 2016. In 2019, she started selling loaves of her bread to a handful of neighbors and friends.
By the summer of 2020, her bread business “blew up,” as she puts it, and she found herself making, at times, 25 loaves a week for neighbors, co-workers and acquaintances.
“I’ve always loved feeding people and hosting people in a cozy space,” Buchanan says. “I’ve always been drawn to that.”
Buchanan then started featuring her creations on a Rise Baking Company Instagram and offered a subscription service where people could register to pick up bread from her porch weekly or biweekly.
After finalizing plans with Shales and Johnson, Buchanan took a break from baking bread so she could focus her energy on the construction phase of the project. She’s spent the past 10 months waiting tables at East Johnson Family Restaurant, where she’s still working, before she’s “back in the kitchen all the time,” making bread and sweet and savory pastries.
The cafe will have seating for about 30 people and the space is still undergoing renovation. Buchanan is hoping for an early spring opening, while acknowledging this is a time of unprecedented uncertainties and delays. “My goal is to open within the next two months,” she says.
“I’m excited for people to eat my bread again,” Buchanan says. “I miss [baking] it and I think people miss eating it.”
