Rebekah and Vincent Hopkins are sweetening the holidays and beyond.
After beginning Freestyle Confections in early 2018, the couple moved their bakery and retail operations into a brick-and-mortar space at 179 Main St. in Oneonta.
Though Freestyle Confections and Freestyle Shoppe, transitioning to Freestyle, began in their Worcester house with a home-processing license, Rebekah said, a retail space was always the goal. Vincent, an Oneonta native, has a culinary background, while Rebekah said she brings to Freestyle her “entrepreneurial mindset.”
“A few months ago, we found a downtown location and we checked it out to see if it’s what we want for our future plans,” Rebekah, a Worcester native, said. “We moved in in September and opened in October. Right now, it’s like a gift shop and where we sell our bakery stuff … but our plan is to build a commercial kitchen, and that’s going to happen when we have the funds.
“So, it’s kind of one-stop gift shopping, if you want to buy something to munch on, or some bread for you or someone, or we have a lot of home decor and mugs and some local jewelry,” she continued. “We have local maple sugar candy, and we plan to have more local vendors. We also sell furniture, so it’s just kind of a crazy mix of things. But (transitioning to a downtown space) has been the biggest focus since 2018, and we hope to be baking things fresh in there, where everyone can smell the goodies baking, but that’s a transition we have to make.”
Already, Rebekah said, Freestyle has expanded its offerings and customer base.
“Whenever people come in that I don’t recognize, I ask how they heard about us, like, ‘did you happen to be walking by, or did you hear about us on Facebook?’ and 95% say, ‘we just saw this,’” she said. “So, it’s been really exciting for people to be curious. Being on Main Street and being in people’s minds who would not necessarily have seen us has been really awesome, and we’ve been selling a lot to the colleges because of Facebook, but now the kids can come in and see us and their parents can come, so we’ve had a lot of outreach this past year. And baseball families — we started selling to them with deliveries (over the summer) and now, this season, they can come in and see us. A lot of exciting things are happening.
“Another new thing is we got approved to sell on DoorDash, which is not an easy feat, because they didn’t know what to do with home processors,” Rebekah continued. “So, it took a lot, but we actually got approved like two months ago, and that’s a huge thing for a small business like us.”
Even as costs have risen, Rebekah said, she and Vincent have remained committed to keeping their baked goods, including the cookie-decorating kits for which they became known, affordable.
“We made baseball sugar cookie-decorating kits (in the summer), and our goal with the kits is to (provide) no-mess, fun moments for families,” she said. “People stop us in the stores (about the kits), and we do fundraisers; we just worked with a local school, and they sold 115 kits and that was our best fundraiser yet. We give $5 back to the organization or group. It’s a big deal to have that support from the community and surrounding communities.
“(Customers represent) all of Otsego County, and we deliver to the colleges and SUNY Cobleskill … (which is) my alma mater, so I felt a pull to want to deliver to those students, too,” Rebekah continued. “We do some of Schoharie County and we even deliver to Albany and Syracuse, and we never charge a delivery fee, we only require a minimum delivery. We try to make it really easy for people to access our baked goods without extra charges. And we bake for people with severe allergies all the time, and they’re so grateful. We love doing custom orders for people and we love doing vegan or gluten-free or keto options.”
The Hopkinses said they hope to cement their place in the community, while continuing to grow.
“The main goal is to be a staple and to get into people’s point of view,” Vincent said.
“We plan to do food — savory, real food that people can get for breakfast and lunch — and still do the baked goods,” Rebekah said. “We would like to be a staple, where people are like, ‘We want to stop by Freestyle for lunch and a sweet treat.’ Just being downtown has been our ultimate goal, so for us to be there and be nearing five years open is really exciting and one huge step toward the full goal, which is the commercial kitchen and doing everything on premises. The plan (for that) would be early 2024. Our son is 5 and our daughter is 15 and … keeping it in the business is one of goals, and they’re learning everything with us.”
Freestyle is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday, though Rebekah said hours will be extending soon. She said, “people can always order,” and said delivery is available daily. Also, Freestyle will be open from 10 to 5 on Christmas Eve, she said, “as a pop-up for everyone’s last-minute goodies and gifts.”
For more information, find “Freestyle Confections: From Scratch, >From Home” on Facebook.