SARTELL — A cottage food company in the St. Cloud area will take over the former Dunn Brothers Coffee location along Highway 15 in Sartell.
Co-owners and partners Laura Wolfram and Kayla Adams will operate Corvus Coffee & Bakeshop. The bakery has been run as a home business under Minnesota’s cottage food laws for over a year, said Wolfram, who does the baking. Its specialty is cakes and cupcakes.
But with a commercial location, which Wolfram said they hope to open in October, their offerings will expand to include traditional coffee-shop offerings (think scones and muffins), breakfast items, smoothies made with real fruit and a full-service coffee menu.
They will have goodies ready for purchase but will also take special orders, Wolfram said.
“In our minds, our plan was always to be a coffee shop-slash-bakeshop, ultimately,” she said. “That’s kind of been like a goal and a dream of both of ours for a while.”
They’d originally been inspired by a different location that didn’t pan out, but that location is what started the push for the pair to find a commercial space, Adams said.
“We were already emotionally invested,” Adams said.
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The Dunn Brothers location is already set up as a coffee shop, and therefore wouldn’t take a significant amount of time to retrofit, Wolfram said.
The two have several dreams for Corvus in its new habitat, including eventually utilizing the drive-thru and roasting their own coffee. But Adams said they want to start by doing a few things well and work their way toward those goals.
Corvus Coffee & Bakeshop (named after the scientific moniker for the raven) focuses on using local and organic quality ingredients. Wolfram said in a follow-up email that Corvus Coffee & Bakeshop will do its best to ensure there are offerings for those with special dietary needs or restrictions, specifically gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan choices.
She also said she and Adams envision the space as a place where everyone feels welcomed and treated with kindness and respect.
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“People don’t just want a product,” Adams said. “They want it to be an experience. …And that’s another reason why … we dreamed of having it be a physical space. We wanted it to be a place people gather, as much as is feasible right now. And coffee and food are always two things that have brought people together.”
“So to have that space and be the host for that kind of thing in this community, we felt like it just needed another place like that,” Wolfram said.
It hasn’t been without its challenges, but Wolfram said it’s surreal to see their business shift from home-based to one in a commercial space.
“Just the fact alone to be supported by the community, that they want the things that I was baking … that we’re allowed to follow our dreams because we have the community’s support in it,” Wolfram said. “That is huge to me.”
Sarah Kocher is the business reporter for the St. Cloud Times. Reach her at 320-255-8799 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @SarahAKocher.
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