THE FOLLOWING IS A JENNIFER BAILEY STORY FROM THE NEWS-GAZETTE
ABOVE: Michele Rice and daughter Nicole Atkins inside new Sweet Magnolia Diner scheduled for July 1st opening in Catlin. (Photo by Jennifer Bailey)
CATLIN — Michele Rice and her daughter, Nicole Atkins, already are known in the community working at other restaurants. Now, they are branching out on their own.
They will be opening Sweet Magnolia Diner on July 1 at 102 Commercial St., which formerly was High on the Hog restaurant and before that, Toby’s restaurant. Hours will be 5:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. seven days a week. Rice said they’ll see how those hours work. They could expand into evening hours on the weekends.
Rice is known for her pies, cakes, cookies and other goodies in working at Lupita’s Family Restaurant in Tilton.
Atkins has worked at Gilbert Street Cafe since it opened in 2020 in Danville.
They both have regular customers who’ve become like family to them.
Rice, who lives outside of Catlin, and Atkins, who lives in Catlin, both started at age 13 working in restaurants with family, waitressing or doing dishes. They’ve enjoyed it.
Most recently, “I had been going through my mind about opening a coffee shop,” Rice said.
“I couldn’t find anything,” she said about looking at possible locations.
Rice, too, said she always baked for others, pies and desserts at restaurants in Tilton, Westville and elsewhere, and she thought, “why don’t I do this for myself?”
One of her customers at Lupita’s told her about the “perfect location” to open a cafe.
“It just fell into place,” Rice said.
Former building owner Crystal Carter was a godsend, she added.
Rice also had to ask Atkins if she’d go in on the restaurant with her, and her daughter agreed.
“I was nervous,” Atkins said. “It took a lot to put in my notice to come here. But we’re going to do it. We’re going to be all right.”
As a single mom to four children, it was a big ask, but Atkins said they’re ready to do this. Rice said it took a lot of praying.
“I’m very overwhelmed. I’m excited, too,” Rice said.
She said she’s been fixing up and decorating the inside of the restaurant to make it welcoming for customers. There’s new flooring, curtains and other decor to make the restaurant feel comfortable and homey. There are even pictures of Elvis Presley on the wall behind the cash register because Rice and a granddaughter like Elvis.
Rice and Atkins have been getting the building ready for a couple months now.
“The people here have been fantastic,” Rice said.
Their menu will feature a variety of breakfast and lunch items, including omelettes, specialty waffles, pancakes and French toast.
Rice said she’s been trying recipes at home and made chocolate-covered-strawberry French toast. It went over really well.
Atkins said she knows customers like biscuits and gravy with sausage chunks in the gravy, so that’s what they’ll have.
“Those little things make a big difference,” she said.
They also will have the good bacon, not the thin kind with hardly any taste, Rice said.
“You just try to take care of your people and make them feel like their suggestions matter,” she added.
They’ll also have lunch specials every day that include a side, drink and dessert.
They will also have an open-faced, mile-high Reuben sandwich and other sandwiches; low-calorie plates, such as fruit plates and homemade ham, tuna and chicken salad; other salads and soup; and another waitress Robin Baird’s famous Italian beef, and burgers. Atkins said they are not doing anything deep-fried.
There will be freshly-baked cookies, brownies and a variety of pies and other desserts, such as strawberry shortcake and bread pudding.
“I’m kind of creative. I make up things. I made up a maple bacon pie. I made up a German chocolate pie,” Rice said. “I create things and try them out and see how they go.”
Being a waitress all these years, she hears customers say, “my mom used to do that.”
Rice enjoys making pies and desserts that bring back memories for people and make them happy.
Sweet Magnolia Diner also will have senior specials, and there’s a kids menu.
They have a catering job customer already.
To help at the restaurant, they’ll be dragging some of their best friends to waitress on their days off.
“We just want people to feel like this is their home,” Rice said. “They walk into Grandma’s kitchen, the fresh cookies come out, the muffins on the counter; that’s what I want,” Rice said.
They want it to have the comfort of a new small-town restaurant where the community can gather, Atkins added.
Opening a restaurant isn’t easy.
“They almost make it too hard for the little guy to make it these days. But I’m telling you what, Catlin’s putting everything in that they’ve got to make sure we make it,” Rice said.
Rice and Atkins spoke at a Catlin board meeting and passed out cookies. Immediately afterward, Rice got a call inquiring about the cookies.
Catlin residents are definitely excited about the restaurant opening and are ready to support it. A group of men already stopped by a week before opening, Rice said, and asked what’s for lunch.
Resident Diana Schutz said, “we’ve just been a restaurant desert for a while.”
Pizza Time was another popular restaurant that closed in 2018. Schutz said it will be nice to have a restaurant back in town to go to for meals.
She said Catlin continues to change; even its skyline will be changing with the expected tearing down of a grain elevator next month.
“This is the kick in the pants the whole village needed,” Schutz said.
She said there’s a lot of enthusiasm for the new restaurant.
