My Favorite Muffin — Restaurant in Centerville

A home away from home. Isn’t that what we would all like to have? Well Shelly and Rich Kate have created it with My Favorite Muffin and Bagel Café. The husband and wife tandem of Shelly & Rich Kate purchased what Shelly refers to as “God’s Muffin Shop” in June of 2008. At this time, Shelly was operating a home cleaning business and Rich was working at Delphi. Rich had always wanted to own a restaurant, so when he got laid off, it just made sense to make the purchase. Shelly was against the idea at first. She wanted to move back to Wisconsin to be closer to family and didn’t think they had the money, but they decided to take the risk. Shelly’s first impression of the business was that it was homey and comfortable and had lots of potential. Once she decided to roll with it, she wanted to make it personal by using her OCD trait to the max. She cleaned for (2) weeks straight and still wasn’t satisfied. Since then, Shelly has put many systems in place to keep the café clean and efficient. Anyone that has eaten at My Favorite Muffin has more than likely noticed that even the coffee pots shine! The most personal part of My Favorite Muffin for Shelly is knowing everyone’s name. She keeps a book behind the counter with descriptions and reminders of different people’s names and who they come in with. She even writes little ditties to help remember patron’s names. Once she knows their name, she then tries to remember what everyone orders. Customers quickly become friends at the café. If you can’t tell by now, Shelly LOVES people. She is the face of the café, while Rich handles all things in the background such as ordering, interviewing, and accounting. You name it. He does it. The “Muffin” team of employees is like family, and they reflect Shelly 100%. They even show hints of catching her OCD. All duties are shared by every member of the team. My Favorite Muffin has the largest selection of coffee in the area. Light roast is everyone’s favorite, but they also have flavored coffees along with lattes, ice coffees and cappuccino. Their best kept secret is their soups, salads and sandwiches. Customers love the cinnamon crumb muffins, but sales are actually equal between muffins and bagels. Some of their specials are: Mondays - Jumbo Muffins are ½ off @ $1.19, and Thursdays -1 dozen Bagels are ½ off @ $5.99. If you’re just looking for a pick me up or a word of encouragement, Shelly has placed a corkboard in each restroom with index cards pinned to them. On them, you’ll find encouraging quotes and pieces of scripture for customers to take with them. When Shelly refers to her café as “God’s Muffin Shop,” I don’t think she realizes how much her café really resembles what He intends for us here on earth as far as Muffin Shops go. Drop by and enjoy a little piece of heaven, and make sure to tell her that Greg...

Quintessential "can't skip" restaurant when I visit. Jumbo muffins and new COLD BREW slay! My favorite muffin (since that's the title of the restaurant we should all name one): double chocolate (dark choco, not bitter). Breakfast combos (bagel sandwich, coffee and three mini muffins) are a great value & allow you to sample the oodles of muffins they offer. Second fave muffin: chocolate cheesecake. Oreo cream is third.

Staff is excellent. Visiting them is one of the highlights of my trips, that's how kind they are! Shout-out to Shelly, Sharon (remember, it's the "Rocky Horror Roxy cast" on iTunes!) and crew, old and new. The crew writes quirky post it notes and pin them on a board in the bathrooms, free to take. Kinda kitchy cool.

They recently introduced COLD BREW (importantly, in caps) and it's delicious. For CB aficionados, quasi-similar to Lucky Jack but smoother with chocolatier finish. Strong but accessible for those who don't fancy CB generally. No aftertaste. I have a Starbucks account. I got CB here anyway. My only critique is that it be included (for an upcharge of the remainder?) in the breakfast special. Not a hot coffee person most of the time, so I'd like it to be able to utilize it with the combo. Offering discount or complimentary CB refills (after attaining a certain "level" of purchases, like Starbucks' "gold level") may be an interesting way to get more people to subscribe to the app, which is worth getting, especially if you plan to go more than once...

Bagels were very good as usual. However the staff they had may have had a combined IQ of 10. I was surprised we didn't literally need to draw out our order with the girl who took our order. So now order is in we move down to the one who will be getting our bagels. We tell her which ones we want, she could not understand what we meant by, we wanted them "sliced" she came back and asked us if that meant we wanted her to cut them. It wasn't just the two girls though. The cashier had another girl by her that was no more capable of taking an order either. We asked if they had individual butter and cream cheese instead of getting a pound of them. She actually said," wait you want butter for a bagel?" She could not grasp that concept that someone wanted butter. Then she couldn't understand I wasn't going to use an entire pound of cream cheese for two bagels. I wasn't wanting to use anywhere close to that and did not want to spend $5 on cream cheese for 2 bagels. I sure hope they start getting some people to work that have a clue of what's going on. They have a lot better bagel selection than Panera but at least I have never had anyone at Panera that was as stupid.( I hate to say it that way but it's the...