04/19/2024
My neighbor!!
🌟 Feature Friday 🌟
This weeks feature Friday business is The 490 Bakery!
Davine Calkins (Co-owned with husband Brian)
231.329.2756
Hours: Tue-Thur 8am-3pm
Fri and Sat 8am-4pm
Custom Orders-Events- Muskegon Farmers Market
In 2015 I was part of the startup team at Fresh Coast Alliance in Muskegon and worked as their Employment Director. Fresh Coast works directly with men and women that are coming home from prison or jail, or working through the recovery process. They now have extensive opportunities to connect folks with exactly the right options to bring them to a place of healing. At the time I started the biggest hurdle for folks with a record was employment and the joy I was experiencing in helping connect them with meaningful work was reigniting a lifelong dream of starting a bakery. I wanted something that would be meaningful everyday, as Fresh Coast had been once I transitioned to the place of full time work on the business. My husband and I started the business in 2018 and started selling at the Farmers Market in 2019. Our first year was a great learning opportunity, but 2020 showed me so much more about the journey that we had embarked upon. Not only was that year hard from a business aspect, but the challenges facing folks in recovery and returning to their communities was going to make a lifelong impact on me.
We have been able to be transitional employment for several folks and give them a hand up to gain the confidence they need to step into full time employment as well as understand that their choices are not what define them. Yet, there was another aspect of our presence in the community that was presenting itself everyday. The 490 Bakery has become an avenue to have great conversations with our communities to bring greater understanding of what addiction and reentry really are and what it is not. So many families are struggling and feel isolated and alone in their journey. To see the joy and realization, when they are buying a cookie that they are not alone.
