Red Hen café moving to Montpelier

March 30, 2026  |  By Peter Cobb  |  The Times Argus

Red Hen Bakery and Café co-owner Randy George at Red Hen's longtime Camp Meade location in Middlesex. Photo by Peter Cobb for the Times Argus

MONTPELIER — The Red Hen café and retail shop, at the Camp Meade complex in Middlesex, is moving to Montpelier.

The bakery will remain in the current location until renovations to a new site at 31 Welch Park, in Middlesex, a quarter mile north on Route 2, are completed.

The new cafe is set to open May 1 at 60 Main St., most recently the location for Access Café, which closed February 2025. Before that it was Rabble-Rouser Chocolate & Craft.

According to Randy George, co-owner of Red Hen bakery and café with his wife, Eliza Cain, the main reason for the move is that more space was needed for both the cafe and the bakery.

In addition, the new building provides on-site warehouse space. Currently, Red Hen rents warehouse space in Williston.

The Middlesex café holds 35 seats. The Montpelier restaurant will have a 48-seat capacity. The Welch Park location will have 15,000 square feet for the bakery, restaurant, retail store and warehouse, more than twice the current space. When the café opens at that location, it will have 45 seats.

The original idea was to move the entire Red Hen operation to Welch Park. Opening a Montpelier café was not part of the initial plan, George said. However, with the completion of the new facility significantly behind schedule and an exit date from the Camp Meade building set for this spring, the Red Hen owners seized the opportunity to open the Montpelier restaurant.

“The biggest delay had to do with the three permits we had to get. I want to point out that the Town of Middlesex has been unbelievably supportive. None of the delays are due to the town,” George said.

The work on the final permit for the water supply is complete and is in the 30-day comment period. If successful, there will be another 30-day comment period concerning the land use.

“We were very fortunate to have an incredible opportunity to move the café to Montpelier. We are excited about the wide range of possibilities this move could bring,” George said.

Cain agrees.

“There are so many possibilities that exist with this transition, as well as opportunities to further build up and support the local community through both cafés,” Cain said.

If all goes as planned, Red Hen will move its bakery to Welch Park in September with plans to begin construction of a new café after that. The permits granted to date are for the bakery only, so the restaurant and retail shop will have to go through a new round of permits before work can begin on the new café.

Red Hen Baking Company was established in 1999 on Route 100 in Duxbury. George had been baking bread for several years, both in his home state of Maine, as well as in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. When he and his then-future wife Eliza decided to move back to her home turf, the Mad River Valley, they did so intending to open a bakery in Duxbury. For the first eight years in business, they focused almost exclusively on baking and delivering fresh bread to area stores and restaurants.

The operation moved to the Camp Meade complex in Middlesex in November 2007 and added the café.

“We had never run a café before, so we didn’t know what to expect,” Georgie said. “But now our café is 50% of our business.”

Future plans include running cafés in both Middlesex and Montpelier. Woodbelly Pizza will take over the cafe space in Middlesex beginning May 1, ending Red Hen’s 18-year run at that location. The Red Hen bakery will continue operating at the Camp Meade facility until the move to Welch Park is completed.

According to George, Red Hen has had a long business relationship with Woodbelly.

“We are grateful to have worked out a plan with them that allows Red Hen’s baking operations to remain at Camp Meade until we move to the Welch Park space in the fall.”

Red Hen will continue to bake and deliver bread to local stores and restaurants seven days a week, as they have been since George and Cain founded the bakery nearly 27 years ago.

The business employs 60 people. When both cafés are operating, the total number of employees will likely grow considerably, George said.

Longtime Red Hen café and kitchen manager Hannah Conner, who grew up and still lives in Berlin, said she is excited to be creating a new destination in her community.

“We will work tirelessly to create a café environment in this larger Montpelier location that is as good or better than the one that exists in Middlesex, with the same menu offerings, bread, pastries, coffee and creemees,” Conner said.

The Red Hen team also plans to continue offering a corporate catering menu that includes salads, sandwiches, coffee and pastries for breakfast and lunch meetings.

Red Hen plans to open its Montpelier café seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended evening hours for creemees in summer.