COOK- It’s an ordinary building on an ordinary highway in an ordinary North Country town, but what Rebekah Hodge Olson creates inside Rose Cottage Baking Co. in Cook is quite simply extraordinary.
It’s the latest and biggest step yet for a business Olson started in her own kitchen in 2008 to indulge her twin passions of baking and providing healthy food options for the community, and to provide a learning experience for her daughters Victoria and Maria. They began by setting up shop at the Cook Area Farmers Market.
“My daughters were nine (Maria) and ten (Victoria), and I started it for them to be able to earn some money, learn how to work hard, and how providing a service to the community would get them in touch with people,” Olson said. “So, we started and they learned how to work hard and they enjoyed it.”
Olson enjoyed it, too, and as the girls grew older and took on more responsibility, Olson shifted her attention to another passion: creativity.
“As they got into their teen years, they took over the classic recipes that people love, the cinnamon swirls, the whole wheat breads, the Swedish rye,” Olson said. “They pretty much ran the bakery and I focused on developing new recipes. The more I challenged myself, the more I looked for the next challenge, searching the world over for fascinating recipes you can’t get anywhere else.”
Having grown up in a family that valued education, an inquisitive mind and continuous learning have been key elements of Olson’s success.
“I went to libraries before the internet and borrowed copious amounts of books,” Olson laughed. “Anything I could get my hands on. And once the internet was available, I availed myself of the wealth of knowledge there. Never stop educating yourself. There are always new techniques, there’s always something that’s been done a certain way and they’ve found a new innovative way, a more economical way, or a healthier way to do it.”
Olson’s baked goods developed a devoted following of people who eventually wanted to be able to get her creations outside of the famers market season. At the time, a stand-alone bakery wasn’t an option, but toward the end of the 2017 farmers market season she hit on a unique alternative, bakery boxes. Starting with only three customers, Olson created weekly unique options of new recipes that people could order and have delivered in decorative boxes. Between listening to suggestions from her customers and her growing skills using social media to market the endeavor, the business took off.
“As word spread and people saw these fun things that are only available one time, just in that bakery box and never available again, it just blossomed,” Olson said. “I learned what people liked, and now there are so many popular recipes that I do repeats.”
Olson delivers her bakery boxes to customers from Cook to Grand Rapids and said, “It’s interesting to see which city prefers which recipes.”
It has been quite the journey for someone whose first experience baking was whipping up a boxed strawberry cake mix as a six-year-old under the watchful eye and guidance of her mother, and opening Rose Cottage Baking Co.’s storefront in Cook is the culmination of her passion for baking, healthy eating, and service to the community.
The bakery box idea was so successful that Olson was bumping up against the state’s sales limit for products produced in home kitchens, and if she were going to keep doing it, she needed to find a building. After much searching, in 2020 she found the location at 210 Hwy. 53, across the road from Zup’s Grocery. When she contacted Jodee Micheletti at Northeast Title Company about the possibility of renting the space, Micheletti responded with an unexpected offer to sell the property to her.
“She said she’d like to offer the building for sale and that she would cut the price so I would have equity in the building right away,” Olson said. “She said this is what was done for her when she bought the building. It was the first building she ever purchased, and she said she believed in paying it forward. I was kind of overwhelmed.”
Olson turned to her advisors at the Small Business Development Center in Duluth and to marketing experts Anna Anderson and Beth Chapman at Art Unlimited in Angora, and when both said the offer made good business sense she took the plunge.
Demolition began last September, and Olson temporarily halted making bakery boxes at the end of December with construction scheduled to begin in earnest in January.
There were many familiar hands that contributed to the construction and cleanup process, including but not limited to Olson’s husband, Jason, her sister, Leah Landacre, and brother, Micah Hodge, as well as her children, including sons Van, Al, and Rod King Jr. But yet another unexpected blessing appeared late in the fall in the form of local retired master carpenter Nick Brown.
“My sister is friends with him, and she told him that I was building a bakery and could use some help,” Olson said. “He walked in one day and said, ‘Hi, I’m your sister Leah’s friend, my name is Nick Brown, and I’m a retired master carpenter and I’d like to help you.’ And it was amazing. Nick had tools and tricks of the trade that I’d never used before. I learned a lot and enjoyed getting to know him and building a friendship with him, and he has the sweetest wife, Monica. I told her to be sure Nick is here for the grand opening, so he gets all the credit that he has coming to him. I owe so many people that I could never pay back for all of the kinds of help and encouragement they gave me.”
When Rose Cottage Baking Co. is fully operational, there will be more than Olson’s tasty and healthy baked goods available. There’s a small cozy dining area at the front of the store, and she’ll be offering panini sandwiches and soup and perhaps other fare that’s out of the norm for typical cafes, she said. A gleaming silver espresso machine will get fired up next week after she and her staff get the appropriate training, Olson said.
While a grand opening is coming on Thursday, April 7, Olson did a soft opening this week beginning Tuesday, serving only coffee and scones from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“The reason I’m doing a soft opening is that I owe so much to the community,” Olson said. “They kept my little business going all these years. This is an opportunity where I would have time to visit because I won’t be stuck under a noisy hood. I can sit here and visit and talk and let them see what they did, how they brought this little housewife, who has some business sense and common sense, how they brought her to this place where she could serve her community full time. I am so stoked.”
Next week, Olson will be open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The week of March 28 she will be open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“I’m pretty much easing into being open full time,” Olson said. “I gave myself two weeks to practice using the equipment before I opened to the broader community.
The week of April 4, which includes her grand opening date, she will be open regular hours Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. She will also start opening on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon.
Check the Rose Cottage Baking Co. Facebook page for announcements, business hours, and more. Information is also available by calling the bakery at 218-231-5400 or emailing rosecottagebakingco@gmail.com.