Our Story

How it all started

Our introduction to the food business began in 1991 when we renovated some historic property in Barrington, IL, a suburb of Chicago, and opened Yvette’s Espresso Bar. The idea was to create a European-style cafe serving great Italian espresso and simple, freshly prepared food where everyone was welcome, like the neighborhood bars and restaurants we remembered growing up in Chicago.

What started as a 600 sq. ft. espresso bar quickly evolved into a 2,600 sq. ft. café with 18 employees, 100 seats and an outdoor patio that became the gathering place for everyone in the community. With the help of some graduate students from the University of Illinois we developed recipes for all-natural, easy to bake scones, muffins and biscuits that soon became the cafe’s signature items. As the popularity of the pastries grew we created a line of packaged mixes for home bakers, retail shops and cafes around the country.

By 1998, with three daughters in college and the fourth about to go, we decided it was time for a change. So, to the surprise of our friends and families, we sold everything except the recipes, packed our bags and moved to California.

Santa Cruz seemed like the logical choice. Two of our daughters were students at UC Santa Cruz, there were plenty of students and tourists to support a bigger and better café and the geography and weather were spectacular. Since California was already a leader in the artisan food movement, with an abundance of locally grown, high quality ingredients, we thought it would be an ideal place set up shop.

While searching for a new location for the cafe we focused on expanding our line of mixes, sourcing artisan flour from a family-owned miller in San Francisco, Blenheim apricots (the finest on the market) from a family farm in Hollister and other ingredients from local sources who have become trusted suppliers for twenty years. By April, 2000 our efforts were starting to pay off. The scones were featured on the “O List” in the premier issue of Oprah’s magazine; in July we earned an award in the Outstanding Baked Goods category from the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT) the industry’s leading trade organization; and by the following January the Chicago Tribune declared that Iveta mixes produced a “proper” scone that could be served with pride to company.

Over the years the business continued to grow and in 2004 our scones were recognized, for a second time, by the NASFT in their product awards competition, something no other baking mix has achieved and in 2006 our muffins were awarded the $10,000 grand prize in the food competition held at "America's Best Food Show" in Anaheim, CA. By 2009 distribution was expanding throughout the country, new flavors were added and we introduced jams, curds and clotted cream to compliment our baked goods.

To accommodate the growth of the business we moved to the up-and-coming Westside of Santa Cruz, tripled our production space and in 2010 finally opened our new cafe. Although it took more than ten years to re-introduce our cafe, it was worth the wait. The intervening years gave us time to perfect our recipes, develop a great network of suppliers and gather the knowledge and experience necessary to succeed in a very competitive industry.

The success of our Westside cafe created an opportunity to open a second, larger, cafe on the campus of UC Santa Cruz. The campus Cafe also features simple, freshly prepared food, Italian style espresso and craft beer and wine from sustainable, local producers. We're also helping the University meet it's environmental goals by composting and using new energy saving appliances and lighting with a state of the art daylight harvesting system.

Now, after more than twenty years in California, we are proud of the fact that our family business has survived and thrived, despite the great recession and the pandemic, winning the 2021 Gold Sofi award (fka NASFT) for our scone mixes, while expanding our Westside cafe and reopening our campus cafe.

Our latest project is a new restaurant near the beach whose mission is to provide a casual lunch and dinner experience reminiscent of fine European seaside cafes, while helping Santa Cruz to meet it’s long-standing goal of revitalizing the lower Pacific Avenue area and providing an elegant transition from the downtown business area to the wharf.