Dan and Regina Cochran, outgoing owners of Renee’s Bakery, were getting their car serviced recently when a bakery customer spotted Regina.
“Who’s with you?” the woman asked.
Regina identified her husband, with whom she’s worked alongside for 40 years.
“Oh really,” the customer replied. “What’s he do?”
Dan, 66, the source of Renee’s tasty confections since 1976, revels in his anonymity.
While he’s been a mainstay at the bakery for nearly as long as wife Regina, 65, he’s done so under the cloak of early morning hours, and in the back kitchen area, where customers aren’t allowed.
“We don’t work together all that much,” Regina notes with a smile. “His day starts about 1. My day starts at 6.”
Their hours will become much more relaxed in the coming days, as the Renee’s Bakery rolling pin is passed to Nikki Damron.
Damron acquired the bakery April 1, began working there Monday, and assumes full-time control May 1.
Regina will remain in a support role through May — one of the bakery’s busiest times of the year due to graduations, Mother’s Day and related events.
“Regina knows May’s not a good time for me to be on my own,” Damron said.
WITH the new owner, little else will change at Renee’s.
“I’m not changing anything, as of now,” Damron said. “Maybe in the fall, we’ll see how comfortable I am with things.”
She’ll keep the Renee’s name, the same hours, and even the same recipes for a vast array of doughnuts, cookies, cakes and other goodies.
“She gets the clientele, the recipes,” Regina said. “We’re in the process of sorting everything now.”
Damron is considering, perhaps as early as fall, selling coffee alongside her daily doughnuts. Not much point in starting coffee sales in the summer, she noted.
