Hi everyone,

This is Reggie. Reggie Edwards. Raised right here in Memphis.

Thirty years ago I left for Seattle and fell into a world of great pastry and coffee culture. Eventually I decided I wanted to make it, not just eat it, and enrolled at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, one of North America's top pastry schools, to train in classical French pastry. I fell in love with the discipline of doing something small perfectly, and the whole time, I have always wanted to bring this culinary art home to Memphis.

So, two years ago, I came back to a city with a real appetite for change: better pastry.

For the last year, you've watched me do it the hard way, baking out of my own kitchen, building a pop-up from scratch with The Cooper House Project, handing fresh pastries to strangers every chance I got. What I learned is that Memphis is hungry for this. Enough of you told me to get a real address that I finally signed a lease.

Halcyon Bakery & Cafe is going into 945 South Cooper, in the heart of Cooper-Young. The lease is signed, architects are drawing, permits go in this fall. Everything will be made fresh, in-house, every morning, by hand, the same as every pop-up, just with walls around it now.

I've put in my own money and raised the rest one conversation at a time. This last stretch is for the room itself, equipment and build-out, the things that turn an empty storefront into somewhere you want to sit on a Saturday morning.

Specifically:

The pastry case and the refrigeration behind it

The oven and the mixers

The coffee bar

Tables, chairs, and the front of the room

Small tools, and the first run of boxes and bags

If you've eaten something of mine at a pop-up, this is the room where it gets made from now on. I want you to help build it, not just visit it once it's open.

Any amount helps, and I mean that.

When the walls are bare, come write on them. Whatever you write gets painted over before we open, and it stays under there for as long as the building stands.

Thank you for believing in this before there was anything to believe in but me and a table. I can't wait to bake for you in a space with my Halcyon Bakery & Cafe on the door.

Reggie

Halcyon Bakery & Cafe

945 South Cooper, Cooper-Young, Memphis