Dining Dish: Downtown café closes temporarily to focus on school meals

“Our parent company, Baked by Anita Catering, LLC, is a School meal service provider,” stated the post. “Due to the recent surge of COVID-19 and the Delta variant, many of our schools have made sudden changes which will require additional attention from the entire BBA Team.”

An acronym for Baked By Anita, the café is owned by Anita Stephens, a Dayton native who attended the University of Cincinnati and has run a successful catering business since 2009. In fact, she has served breakfast and lunch to a number of Dayton and Cincinnati charter schools ― one of many being The Dayton Regional STEM School — and has also offered special events catering.

“So that our Café quality of service and food are not compromised, we will close for a brief period while we make the necessary adjustments,” BBA Café posted.

Stephens owned the space since June 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic kept the business juggling daily changes in a variety of school breakfast and lunch schedules as well as grab-and-go meal programs for students learning at home. BBA Café was finally able to open in mid-April.

Stephens said BBA’s aim has always been to serve up “Real. Good. Food.” ― the café's motto — while keeping the menu affordable and homemade. Including almost everything served for breakfasts and lunches at the schools BBA services, everything the café puts on the menu is fresh and made from scratch.

Customers can stop in with only a little time to spare on their lunch break, spend as little as $4 and get a filling lunch.