The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON - About five minutes into her interview with a reporter on a recent morning, Carolyn Suffield, owner and operator of Carolyn's Café, had to excuse herself to help another customer. That customer was looking to buy a dryer.

Such is the life of a café owner whose family is longtime owner of Suffield's Furniture and Appliance Store. Early this year, Suffield, and her husband, Al, decided to convert the west side of Suffield's furniture store, one of Dayton's oldest businesses, into a small breakfast café.

Carolyn's Café opened in April, and serves breakfast every day except Sunday and Wednesday. It is open from 6 a.m. until at least noon. "I don't turn people away at lunchtime," Suffield said.

Anyone arriving around lunchtime will still have to order off the breakfast menu, since it's the only menu Carolyn's has.

Carolyn's serves breakfast staples like eggs with bacon or sausage, and biscuits and gravy, as well as pancakes, French toast and Belgian waffles. But Carolyn Suffield is best known for her cinnamon rolls.

"This morning I made four-and-a-half dozen cinnamon rolls," she said. "Most of them are already sold," She pointed to a plate with less than a dozen left on the counter. (It was only about 8:30 a.m.) That's a typical day's batch, she said. Suffield says she doesn't sell her baked goods wholesale to other eateries, but businesses often come in and buy as many as a dozen at a time for their offices.

Besides cinnamon rolls, Carolyn's offers many other baked goods, including pies, cakes, cookies and cheesecakes. On Wednesdays, when the Café is closed, Suffield makes a delivery run to Walla Walla with a carful of baked goods.

Suffield is not new to the breakfast (and cinnamon roll) business. Many Daytonites remember her former business, called Homebaked Goodness, also on Main Street. She operated it for two years out of her home and five years downtown, before selling it in 2012. "I'm really excited to be back doing this again," she said.

Carolyn's Café features historic photos on the wall of the old Suffield's Furniture Store and its owners.

Al Suffield's grandfather, Clifford Suffield, opened a used furniture store in 1913 in a building where the parking lot for Country Cupboard is now. "It was the Mission Tavern before that," he said. Within five years, Clifford moved the business to its current location at Third and Main Streets. It was once a two-story building with a hotel on the upper level, the second level was removed after a fire severely damaged the building in the 1930s.

Carolyn's Café will be closed from August 29 through September 8, while the Suffields take a vacation, but it will offering breakfast and baked goods throughout the fall.