Country Café & Bakery Share

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Rachel Creech, own­er and founder of Coun­try Café & Bak­ery, was inspired to start a busi­ness dur­ing vis­its to the Open Air Mar­ket in Mar­i­on. In August 2012, she became a ven­dor at the mar­ket sell­ing foods made from scratch such as jel­lies and baked goods.

Rachel and her devot­ed fam­i­ly & busi­ness part­ners — her hus­band Eric, and her moth­er, Ter­ry Reynolds — remod­eled a Down­town build­ing on the Mis­sissinewa Riv­er on 1^st & Wash­ing­ton Streets, for­mer­ly inhab­it­ed by Vogel’s Donuts. Rachel expressed love for the loca­tion because of the riv­er and views of nature while in a busy set­ting. They estab­lished an agree­ment with the City of Mar­i­on to rent the build­ing with hopes to pur­chase it one day.

In Octo­ber 2015, Coun­try Café & Bak­ery opened for busi­ness. The name explains the busi­ness to a tee as a ful­ly-func­tion­al café with home­made food items for pur­chase. They also have been cater­ing since day one, which they say has helped their over­all suc­cess. ​“Our cater­ing has real­ly tak­en off over the past year. It’s pro­duc­ing near­ly half of our rev­enue, and we’re doing larg­er events such as wed­dings,” Rachel said. Reynolds added that the suc­cess of the busi­ness is because all of their food is made from scratch, and made fresh.

‘Coun­try Café,’ now almost three years old, serves the com­mu­ni­ty by giv­ing back when­ev­er it can. The fam­i­ly busi­ness ini­ti­ates and par­tic­i­pates in ​“Dine to Donate” events where por­tions of pro­ceeds help local char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions such as the Grant Coun­ty Res­cue Mis­sion, God’s House, and the Sal­va­tion Army. They also work close­ly with Carey Ser­vices by giv­ing employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­abled indi­vid­u­als to help place them in the work­ing soci­ety. Reynolds explained, ​“I’m grate­ful that God gave us this busi­ness to help oth­ers in the Mar­i­on community.”

Rachel fur­ther explained they’ve proven suc­cess­ful after com­mit­ting to invest­ing in their busi­ness. ​“Some busi­ness own­ers expect a return on invest­ment right away, but they need to be will­ing to put a lot into it and be patient in order to grow and be successful.”

In June 2018, they bought the build­ing from the City, becom­ing an offi­cial stake­hold­er. They plan to expand the kitchen, add out­door seat­ing over­look­ing the riv­er, and add sig­nage in the near future.

Find Coun­try Café & Bak­ery at 100 N. Wash­ing­ton St., Mar­i­on, Indi­ana, 46952. The Café is open Mon­day through Sat­ur­day from 7am to 2pm.

Sub­mit­ted by Lay­la A. Price, Pres­i­dent, Main Street Mar­i­on Board of Directors