It’s early on a chilly Sunday morning, a few weeks before Halloween 2021( Did you mean 2021?). A few tentative rays of sun are poking through a white-gray cloud cover, and the weather might serve as a metaphor for life in COVID-punished America. Folks are starting to re-merge into society a bit, however cautiously.

Standing in the living room of their small home in Ledyard, Jon and Hannah Young are peering through the front curtains — Peeping Toms, if you will, spying on their own driveway. What they see, frankly, goes beyond gratification to genuine excitement.

They’re watching a wooden roadside stand they set up by the road. It’s a two-tiered shelving unit on top of a drop-leaf table, each painted a pastel lavender, and all available space is filled with fresh-crafted sourdough bagels, cookies, muffins and scones — items the Youngs have been making since late the previous night and well before dawn.

Within handy reach of the assortment is a glass tip jar with hand-scrawled instructions to PAY WHAT YOU WANT WHILE WE WORK OUT THE KINKS!

The couple — who met when Jon was a cook and Hannah a barista — smiles at each other as a moderate stream of cars pulls into the driveway, discharging occupants who peruse the offerings, make choices, contribute bills and/or coins and exit. Similarly, people on morning walks, some with dogs, seem pleased to happen upon this oasis of baked goods that popped up, seemingly out of nowhere, in this quiet residential neighborhood.

The Youngs have been experimenting with the weekends-only, “Will people pay to eat bagels from our driveway?” concept since late summer — long enough for word-of-mouth and social media to create a buzz. In fact, despite the long hours of prep and baking, they can’t keep up with demand and are closing up the stand earlier and earlier.

That realization was literally food for thought.

Where did the time go?

“I’m not sure I viewed this as a full time thing. Maybe the original vision was like those neighborhood read a book/grab a book things. People would see us while they were on walks and grab something. Then we started selling out and realized that this could work.”

Jon Young is talking inside Stonington Borough’s Velvet Mill shopping/arts/dining collective, just a few feet away from The Flour Shop, the bakery he and Hannah officially opened in early November, just a year after their improvisational front yard stand strongly suggested commercial possibility.

It’s a Friday morning and the shop is closed. For now, The Flour Shop is a weekends-only situation, but plans are, in January, to open in a Wednesday through Sunday format.

The menu has expanded significantly. In addition to a large variety of pastries, scones and signature bagels — including such delights as Jalapeno Havarti, Butternut Bacon and Tomato Pesto Provolone — the Youngs are featuring egg-based breakfast sandwiches and hot and cold-brew coffee.

Moving forward

At this stage, the business is very much a work in progress. The couple spent most of the past year learning how to start a business, finding a space, getting permits and equipment, and so on. At the same time, Jon kept his day job managing a pizza restaurant. Before and after work, he continued to evolve as a baker and bagel maker. Hannah also polished her burgeoning culinary skills and focused on marketing, social media and administrative duties. Throughout, the couple cared for their daughters, four-year-old Piper and one-year-old Poppy.

“The kids have had to sacrifice a lot,” Hannah says as Piper works on one of the in-shop coloring books. “They’ve been really good. They’ve had their moments, but they’re part of it.” Hannah laughs. “It’s true that certain situations are made easier with a few extra cookies.”

A creative transition

One significant aspect to the family’s Flour Shop commitment is a major acknowledgment that Jon, who for years has been the leader/singer/songwriter of one of the region’s most popular bands, the indie/garage trio Straight to VHS, has put his rock dreams on the back burner.

Young has stated numerous times that his lifelong artistic ambitions were to “make it” — whatever that term means in the continually morphing music biz. Straight to VHS, a band that formed in 2011 by best pals Young, Tim Donnell and Jay Silva, had steadily developed a following throughout the northeast. They released a series of punchy, witty, hummable garage rock albums and boasted a completely natural, forceful and cheerful persona.

To become a fan was more like joining a carnival krewe rather than entering into an us/them relationship with celebrities — even local celebrities.

In 2019, Straight to VHS released their “Friend Music” album and hit the road, aiming for fresh territories to conquer and new friends to make. Spirits were high and optimism was infectious.

“We were on tour when COVID hit,” Young remembers. “Everything shut down. We couldn’t play. Everything was in lockdown. Hannah said we should do a bagel stand because we live on a pretty busy road and people are always driving by. And it worked.

“But I wasn’t playing any shows and I was starting to get bummed out. My identity was playing music and writing songs.”

Epiphanic moment

One late evening, Young was sitting by himself at the fire pit in their backyard, thinking about his situation.

“Something came over me,” he says. “It was the universe telling me I’m not going to be playing music right now, but (the bakery) is something we can do. The Flour Shop! I got super excited. I’m very vibey and I pick up on things, and I was like, ‘Alright! I’m going to follow these little trails that are laid out for me.’ I was being told, ‘Keep going. Do this thing.’”

He smiles and points at The Flour Shop. “And now, here we are,” he says.

Culinary day jobs

As with most ambitious musicians, Young had supported himself throughout the Straight to VHS journey with a series of day jobs. In his case, they were all restaurant gigs. He started as a dishwasher at 12, then gradually learning to cook and work the line in a variety of fast-food places and a deli. He learned the nuances of wood-fire and brick oven pizzas at the Plum Tomato and Two Wives and expanded his culinary skills as a longtime manager/cook at Washington Street Coffee House. But it was a stint at Deke’s Bagels in Niantic where Young learned the art of making bagels.

Hannah definitely understands Jon’s wistfulness about the band. She says, “This quickly turned into a 60 hours a week commitment, so Jon had to start thinking about it as a full-time job, particularly with COVID. Music was no longer the priority, and that left kind of a hole because he’s such a creative person.

“But (The Flour Shop) has sort of sneaked its way into that hole because he’s making something. I wouldn’t say it’s replaced music, but it’s a good placeholder.”

As it turns out, Jon’s Straight to VHS bandmates Silva and Donnell have been very supportive — literally. The pair have been alternating Saturday morning shifts at The Flour Shop, helping out in the kitchen as the customer base expands. As Silva points out, he and the Youngs met working at the Washington Street Coffee House so, in a way, this “food thing” has come full circle.

“Tim and I get to see first hand how busy (The Flour Shop) is and how happy the customers are,” Silva says. “It’s an honor to watch Hannah and Jon build their dreams from scratch.

“The music will always be there, and we still find time to rehearse and write. Meanwhile, working together on Saturdays we get to talk music, listen to music, and slice bagels — and it's a blast. It’s another chapter in our journey together and it really is a wonderful thing to have our families laugh together on weekend mornings, kids running around, sharing egg sandwiches, coffee drinks and listening to records.”

A new career path

Asked about the fact that she’s sharing kitchen duties with her husband, Hannah reacts with a sort of surprised astonishment. “Did I ever think I’d be making bagels with Jon?” She cracks up. “Definitely not! Once I had the girls, I didn’t really have a career path because I wanted to do whatever would enable us to be together and let me to be at home with the kids as much as possible. That’s the most important thing.

“This is hard work but it’s a lot of fun and I enjoy doing it. I’m pretty good at paying attention to details and things that other people might not have thought of or enjoy, but they need to be done and I’m happy doing them. I’m excited about what we’re doing.”

Bagels as art

“I’ve been cooking since I was 12 years old, and I think I must’ve been good at it,” Jon says. “People that I worked for always kind of foisted responsibility on me whether I liked it or not.” He grins. “I’d ended up getting promoted or something like that and it sucked! ‘I’m in a band,’ you know? That’s what I was worried about.”

But something about the science and alchemy of bagel making struck a flour-and-sourdough chord in Jon’s creative process. He described the pre-dawn hours of solitude as he preps and goes through the steps.

“I like it. To me, baking is kind of a classier division in the hierarchy,” he explains. “When I bake, I’m in a white shirt. It’s not as dirty as a chef, when you get bubbles of grease spattering all over you. And I’ve done that. Now, I have this image of French bakers rising early and doing what they do when no one’s around.

“When I’m working, I put on Django Reinhardt and French gypsy music — it’s the same playlist I was using when we started in our house a year ago. It’s kind of cool that people show up and they don’t realize the hard work that went into it, you know? They were asleep in their beds, and they arrive and the bagels are warm and there’s that aroma…”

As he speaks, Jon gets a bit of momentum. Anyone who’s interviewed him about his music recognized a cadence of engagement signifying excitement.

He says, “Just the fact that I’m making these by hand is similar to music, to writing songs. You think about it ahead of time and then there’s a process with the guitar and your hands and the music comes through. It’s the same thing with bagels; a similar gratification and a cool mystique that I really like. It tastes pretty great, too.”