“She was the baker; and I always liked to cook.” — Husband & wife duo Brad and Amanda Quattlebaum take a sunny break on the church pew bench under the outdoor awning of the Sunflour Bakery & Eatery, the couple’s County Road 222 café that now — thanks to a lot of hard work and some fiercely loyal customers — has a new lease on life in the wake of a 2019 fire.

Brad and Amanda Quattlebaum always harbored dreams of opening their own café. And when the opportunity finally came their way, they took to their food adventure with all the enthusiasm you’d expect from a couple who quit their day jobs and staked their futures on making their dreams succeed.

“Five years seems pretty long now, but we first opened in June of 2015,” says Brad, a West Point native with fond memories of the old Smoker restaurant near his high school alma mater. “I’m one of those men who does like to cook, and we used to skip school to go to the Smoker back in those days.”

Taking a seat inside the small but open dining room where the Sunflour Bakery & Eatery sits near the busy I-65 intersection at County Road 222, Brad talks about the café’s beginnings while Amanda keeps a close eye on incoming orders as Friday’s 2 p.m. closing time nears.

“Before all this, I was dispatching and she was a nurse. But she’d been baking, just out of our house for friends and family, for probably a good 10 years before we ever started,” he says. “I always wanted to have a little café, and things finally felt right for us to get the chance. She was the baker; and I always liked to cook, and between the two of us we had what we needed.”

Sunflour was named as a playfully botanic nod to the nearby Mustard Seed Nursery. The Quattlebaums leased their first space from Mustard Seed owners Rodney and Sandy Walker until both businesses suffered the same setback in the spring of 2019. Restaurant and nursery together, the two businesses originally occupied two sides of a historic house before the structure caught fire and burned beyond saving. Both businesses have since rebuilt in new structures, and though each now has its own freestanding building, they still sit side by side off County Road 222, right at the site of the old house.

The original idea was for Sunflour to be a bakery and nothing more. But after the Quattlebaums got an early taste of the interest that customers were showing, they decided to go all out and make the café a place where anyone who’s hungry — whether it’s nearby workers at the Industrial Park or venturesome travelers off the interstate — could stop and get a uniquely rustic and homemade dining experience.

“My cinnamon rolls are really what started all of this,” says Amanda. “Those, and our orange rolls” (which, she adds, are made from a sourdough recipe that sets them apart from the famous orange rolls at The All Steak…which, she’s happy to confess, are also delicious).

“I used to make bread all the time, and it got to where I was kind of the person who was making the cakes for all our friends and family, which kept me pretty busy,” she says. “But I love cinnamon rolls, and one day when I was making the dough for my bread, I was just like, ‘I wonder if I can use this to make a cinnamon roll?’ — and now here we are.”

With a loyal clientele, a great location, and solid name recognition after four years in business, the restaurant (and the nursery) suffered what seemed a devastating loss when the electrical fire forced the business to completely close. But after 14 months of planning and rebuilding, the Quattlebaums greeted their first guests inside their farmhouse-decorated new building, reopening in July of last year to an out-the-door line of customers delighted to have their favorite sweets, treats, and lunchtime go-tos back on the menu.

“We had customers who would text us or message us over that year that we were closed down, wanting to know how much longer it would be before we could open,” recalls Amanda. “— And they showed up in force when we did,” adds Brad.

“The first day we opened back up, the line was out the door and down the sidewalk,” she continues. “That was a great feeling. Of course we almost had a mini-disaster that same day; 30 minutes before we reopened, a transformer blew and we lost all our electricity and basically had to delay everything. But it worked out. Our customers were patient. They stood there and they waited.”

Any local restaurant owner will tell you it’s a major commitment of time, money, and personal energy to keep the “open” sign facing outward at a place where people want to eat. The Quattlebaums — who themselves haven’t had a proper vacation since 2018 — say it took them a while, but they’ve finally found the right balance between keeping customers happy and elevating their enthusiasm (and high standards) when it’s time to get in the kitchen.

“When we opened back up, we were working 18-hour days for the first two months,” says Brad, with Amanda emphatically adding — “every bit of 18 hours!”

But unlike the early days, Sunflour has shifted away from a seven-day per-week operating schedule, and now serves guests from Tuesday through Saturday, opening at 6 a.m. and closing at 2 p.m. during the week, and from 7 a.m. until noon on Saturdays. With help from their son Bryant (one of two boys; their other son, Paul, is a teacher and coach at West Point), every bit of the food — whether it’s the entrees or the goodies in the bake case — is made from scratch by the Quattlebaums on site. “We’re the kitchen staff!” explains Amanda — and she’s sure to always keep up a daily fresh rotation of flavored rolls, cookies, fried pies, and other treats.

After Valentine’s Day (call the café at 256-775-0408 to score some Cupid-worthy treats), Brad says Sunflour plans to bring back a favorite from the days before the fire: daily lunch specials that showcase his cooking. “It’ll be patty melts on Tuesday; cheeseburgers on Wednesday, Philly Cheesesteak on Thursday, and bacon cheeseburgers on Friday,” he says.

To peek the full menu at Sunflour Bakery & Eatery, visit the restaurant’s facebook page @sunflourbakery222 — and be sure, of course, to bring your appetite.