Once upon a time, the process of buying a loaf of organic Red Hen Baking bread went something like this: You’d drive to the wholesale bakery on a lonely stretch of Route 100 in Duxbury and, upon arrival, honk the black rubber bulb of a bike horn.
“[It would] scare the person making dough in the next room,” recalled Randy George, who opened Red Hen with his now-wife, Eliza Cain, in 1999. “They’d jump up, wash their hands and sell a loaf of bread.”
The system has become more sophisticated over the intervening 27 years — now involving a computerized point-of-sale register and utterly devoid of abrupt, loud noises — but it’s still not perfect. Since Red Hen opened a new café on Montpelier’s Main Street on May 1, the spot has been so busy its line sometimes spills onto the sidewalk.
“We’re meeting with an architect next week,” Cain said. Together, she explained, they’ll create a better workflow for the space.
Red Hen’s move to Montpelier wasn’t in the owners’ long-term plans; it was a work-around to problems caused by delays in a construction project. Nevertheless, the crowd of visitors on a recent sweltering Tuesday afternoon suggests the combination of well-crafted sandwiches, iced coffee drinks and creemees — served in homemade cones pressed from freshly milled flour — is something the city needed.
For 18 years — between the days when Red Hen primarily sold its breads wholesale and the recent opening of its Montpelier location — the bakery was located on Route 2 in Middlesex at the retail hub known as Camp Meade. There, it grew into a popular breakfast and lunch spot, known for its maple-frosted cinnamon buns ($5.15) and buckwheat coconut chocolate chip cookies ($4.12), as well as hearty soups, salads and sandwiches. Some patrons drove from Waterbury, the Mad River Valley or Montpelier to order smoky sliced turkey and local baby greens layered with housemade cranberry chutney ($14.94), while others hopped off nearby Interstate 89 for a cozy PB&J made with Brattleboro’s Sidehill Farm jam ($5.84).
In August 2025, seeking additional space for both the bakery and the eatery, George, 56, and Cain, 58, signed a lease on another Middlesex building, the former home of food delivery biz Farmers to You, at 31 Welch Park. As time passed and permitting delays accrued, they realized the lease at Camp Meade would end before their new location was ready. Hoping to stay open, they looked around for solutions.
Half the problem was solved when Woodbelly Pizza, the new Camp Meade tenant, agreed to share the wholesale bakery space with Red Hen until its building project is completed in September. The other part of the solution lay in a large vacant storefront on the Capital City’s main drag. Formerly the home of Rabble-Rouser Chocolate & Craft (which also had roots at Camp Meade), the 4,000-square-foot space was one of the only locations in town ample enough to meet Red Hen’s needs, and it was ripe for the plucking.
The Montpelier spot started as a stopgap, but once George and Cain found it, the concept of a downtown eatery became a permanent addition to the business plan. “We signed a long lease,” Cain noted. While the future Middlesex location will serve folks who arrive via the nearby highways and byways, the Main Street café is accessible to stroller-pushing parents, gaggles of teenagers seeking after-school ice cream and those who might never have made a detour to visit Camp Meade.
It’s been just over a month, but Montpelier residents and regular visitors are already attached to Red Hen’s cinnamon-and-honey-laced iced lattes ($6.70) and loaves of fresh bread. “The comment cards lately [say], ‘We hope you stay here,’” café manager Hannah Connor said.
Connor, a culinary school-trained pastry chef, has worked for Red Hen on and off since 2008, when she helped develop the bakery’s selection of croissants and other sweet and savory treats. In her current role, she’s been instrumental in helping George and Cain meet the challenges of the ever-changing business climate. She encouraged them to launch a walk-up creemee window when the Middlesex café was closed during the pandemic and helps solve all sorts of logistical quandaries, with the aim of keeping customers happy and coming back for more.
“My favorite part of what I do is problem solving,” she said. “It’s never stagnant.”
Bill Dorigan, a Middlesex resident, has been a Red Hen regular since he moved to Vermont 12 years ago. Although he misses being able to drop in for breakfast sandwiches and scones closer to home, he makes frequent visits to the new shop. Dorigan’s favorite thing about the bakery is the warm customer service, which he enjoys as much as the locally sourced ingredients and morning caffeine.
“There are days when maybe I’m not in such a good mood,” he said. “Having the staff person at Red Hen look me in the eye, smile, and treat me with courtesy and, often, humor makes all the difference.”
Faithful Red Hen customers will find in Montpelier much of what they loved in Middlesex. Aromatic fig anise rolls ($3.40), ham-and-Swiss croissants ($6.18), Vermont Salumi jambon-beurre sandwiches on crisp baguettes ($13.39), and loaves of dense, seeded Sprouternickel ($8.24) are all available, along with flour, jam, clothing, art and bakery merch.
In addition to having more elbow (and laptop) room for customers, the new café is objectively prettier than the old one. High ceilings and copious windows, decorated with images of wheat, give the two rooms an airy vibe. Exposed brick walls are adorned with photographs of grain farmers and hands shaping dough, plus work by area artists. “The whole [Red Hen] thing is using our hands to create beauty through food,” Connor said. “We can also have beauty on our walls.”
As a parent, she’s excited about the return of a designated space for the tiniest Red Hen patrons. The Middlesex Red Hen once had a special children’s area, but it was sacrificed when the spot got too busy to spare the room. In Montpelier, there’s ample space for play, with a squishy floor mat, books, toys and games.
One thing there’s no room for: online to-go orders, which used to make up 50 percent of Red Hen’s business. The new kitchen is too small to accommodate the onslaught of takeout when there are so many people wanting to dine in. Those who miss that convenience will need to wait until the new Middlesex operation is up and running.
That effort will happen in two steps: First, baking will move out of Camp Meade, ceding the entire space to Woodbelly, and start up again at Welch Park. The closure, George estimated, will last for a day or two. Once the baking is comfortably humming along, he and Cain will set their sights on opening the second café.
When Red Hen launched at Camp Meade, George recalled, there wasn’t any other retail in the area. Once people discovered the bakery, that small stretch of road became a destination. Now, there’s a yoga studio, a wine shop and Woodbelly, plus Bent Nails Roadhouse across Route 2. Just a third of a mile down the road is the Roots Farm Market, which offers farm goods, groceries, charming gifts and potted plants.
While Red Hen’s next Middlesex location doesn’t have those surrounding attractions, the team believes the new bakery-café combo will create its own draw.
People always said, “‘You should open another location,’ and I never wanted that. But here we are,” George said with a smile. In truth, he hadn’t originally imagined having an eatery at all.
When he and Cain started the bakery, George was 29, and making bread was “all I knew how to do.” All the couple could afford to launch was a wholesale bread business on a shoestring. But even then, he recalled, “The thing that really excited me the most about bakeries I’d worked in before was how they can connect with the community. Bakeries have a special place in people’s hearts.” Opening their original retail space and lunchtime restaurant, he said, “completed the picture, somehow.”
For Montpelier, which suffered business closings after a devastating flood in 2023 — and a near miss in 2024 — a once-vacant space is thriving again.
“It seems like a welcome booster shot to the town,” Dorigan said.
“I think Montpelier was craving something like this,” Cain agreed before Connor chimed in: “And ice cream never hurts.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Much Kneaded | Red Hen Baking’s bustling new café fills a niche in the Capital City”
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