The owner of Charley’s Waterfront Café, Tommy Graziano, partnered up with pastry chef Melissa Helm to open up a new pastry shop, which will be placed on Main St. where The Bakery used to be next to Uptown Coffee Café. Graziano hopes to open the shop for the good of the town and also to sell the products made by Helm to residents in Farmville and Longwood, but also to Richmond.
“All the recipes are original creations, all my creations,” said Helm.
The front of the store will be open as a pastry shop while the back of the store will be primarily used for wholesales. Helm has been working at Charley’s for 12 years now, and they started to sell their desserts to other restaurants in Richmond.
“We had so many clients (that) we couldn’t make the cakes here,” said Graziano. “We had to sub-contract them out to another bakery, and they just weren’t making them like Melissa does.”
They hope to open the shop before the holiday season; right now, the owners are working on opening the wholesale part of the store, which will serve as the main source of income at the shop. Products sold by the store will include pastries, coffee, cakes, pies, etc. while the wholesale section will distribute cakes and other large orders mostly to places in Richmond.
“Tommy (Graziano) is a business owner and important to the town,” said associate professor of Rhetoric and Composition, Heather Lettner-Rust, a Farmville resident. “We need to place a spot for drinking coffee, eating sweets and talking downtown.”
Graziano and Helm are hoping to help the Farmville community by opening a sweets shop, something more for the town in terms of looks and products. The store will specialize in desserts and hopes to support the community and university.
“You can ask for support if you’re not willing to support them, and I do want that support,” said Helm. “New businesses are tricky, and they’re hard to open."
It is undecided whether the pastry shop will accept Lancer Cash from the university students, but the shop does want to support the community and university.
“To have a personal touch like Charley’s is exciting,” said Krissie Cook, an employee of Mill Street Sweets Shop. “Everything here being homemade is great.”
Charley’s Waterfront Café and the sweet shop will be working together through sales representative and business owner, Graziano, with pastry chef, Helm, working in both locations.
10:25 p.m. - The article previously misspelled the business owner's last name as Garzino. This has been corrected to say, "Graziano."
The owner of Charley’s Waterfront Cafe plans to team up with a baker from Richmond to bring the life back into the the former bakery on Main Street.
The owner of Charley’s Waterfront Cafe plans to team up with a baker from Richmond to bring the life back into the the former bakery on Main Street.
