
Cheryl Maloney says she lives her life by saying “yes,” then figuring out the details later. So when the opportunity arose to embark on her newest venture — expanding The Eat Shop from its original location in downtown Solon to a second, larger spot in Uptown Marion — she moved quickly when she felt the […]
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Click here to purchase a paywall bypass linkCheryl Maloney says she lives her life by saying “yes,” then figuring out the details later.
So when the opportunity arose to embark on her newest venture — expanding The Eat Shop from its original location in downtown Solon to a second, larger spot in Uptown Marion — she moved quickly when she felt the fit was right.
“In my whole life, anyone will tell you, I’m decisive,” Ms. Maloney said during a recent interview in The Eat Shop’s soon-to-be second location at 1107 Seventh Ave., on the ground floor of the new Broad and Main on Seventh building. “I like to make decisions and move forward. I don’t agonize over making a decision. I just know when it’s right, and then I will do everything possible to make it happen.”
It’s been a rapid rise to success for Ms. Maloney and her commercial baking venture, which began just four years ago.
Eat Shop’s origins
Ms. Maloney moved to Solon from Chicago, Illinois, where she was born, but her Iowa roots run deep. Her mother is a Cedar Rapids native, and she has many family members in the area, including a sister and two cousins.
“We’ve been coming out here my whole life for vacations, long weekends, whatever,” she said.
After a long career with a Chicago beverage distributor, Ms. Maloney said she and her husband were re-evaluating their priorities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic when he was provided the opportunity to work remotely.
Coincidentally, Ms. Maloney had taken a hiatus from her career to raise their son in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Finally, the circumstances came together in October 2020.
“My husband got the green light to move, and we were like, let’s move to Iowa,” Ms. Maloney said. “Let’s just go. I felt like one of us was gonna call the other’s bluff, and we never did, so we just picked up and moved.”
Ms. Maloney had been baking for friends and neighbors as a hobby, but she couldn’t sell her home-baked products on a commercial scale under Illinois law, and she faced significant procedural and financial hurdles to open a storefront.
“I would always think about my brand,” she said. “I’d make stickers on Zazzle. But the barriers to entry in Chicago were way too high. It seems like everyone wants you to fail.”
Once she moved to Solon, Ms. Maloney said she found an entirely different business culture.
“Everyone in Iowa, from the health department to the city, they want to cultivate and help you,” she said.
After baking holiday pies for friends, Ms. Maloney was invited to provide wholesale baked goods to the former Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, and with the help of her family and new friends like Megan Laing, the roots of what would become The Eat Shop were formed.
“We were delivering to Mercy three days a week, and we were baking like Lucy and Ethel,” she said, referencing an iconic scene from “I Love Lucy.” However, under Iowa cottage food laws, home-based food businesses are limited to $35,000 in annual production.
“I thought working from home was a decent gig, no overhead,” said. “But I was like ‘Oh, man, we’re gonna exceed ($35,000) before the holiday season, so that’s it. I’ve got to start looking for space.’”
Opening in Solon
So the search began for a location in the heart of Solon.
Ms. Maloney first visited the now-closed Moxie and Mortar store, asking the owners if they knew of any available locations in the city’s hot real estate market.
“They said, ‘There’s a space across the street, but I think the landlords live upstairs, and they don’t want food in there,’” Ms. Maloney said.
So Ms. Maloney asked employees of Briar Ridge Bikes, then at 120 W. Main St., if they had contact information for the neighboring building’s owner.
“Brian Brandt called me the next day and asked if I wanted a lease,” Ms. Maloney said. “I said it was going to be a bakery, and I heard you didn’t want food. He said ‘Well, we don’t want grease or French fry smells upstairs, but we welcome the smell of baked cookies and cinnamon rolls.’”
Ms. Maloney signed a lease for the building at 120 W. Main St., Unit 1, in February 2021, and after some pandemic-related supply chain issues, The Eat Shop opened its doors in August 2021.
“We weren’t even residents of Iowa for a year,” Ms. Maloney said. “It’s not at all what I had ever dreamt I would do. When I was baking in Chicago, I kind of thought about it, but it was never like a real dream, because I just didn’t think I could ever do it.”
It didn’t take long for The Eat Shop to establish a reputation for top-notch baked goods.
“It was great from the jump,” Ms. Maloney said. “We were well-received by the community. We have very loyal customers. And other than Facebook, we’ve never advertised. All of our growth has been word of mouth, working hard and trying to make good products.”
Expansion to UI locations, Coffee Emporium
Even as The Eat Shop continued to grow, the bakery lost its connection with Mercy Iowa City when the hospital declared bankruptcy and was subsequently acquired by UI Health Care.
But as one chapter closed, another opened, when Katy Herbold, owner of Sidekick Coffee & Books in Iowa City, asked Ms. Maloney if The Eat Shop could provide wholesale pastries to her store.
“She’s said that choosing us as her wholesaler for her baked goods was the best business decision she’s ever made,” Ms. Maloney said.

As demand continued to grow, Ms. Maloney registered as a vendor for the University of Iowa, and in the spring of 2023, she received an email indicating that the Boyd Law Building was seeking a new food vendor. After spending several weeks on a pitch campaign, The Eat Shop won the contract — and a new chapter began to unfold.
“We were going from one (location) to two, and even though it’s not a full-blown bakery down there, we had to expand into lunch, because they wanted our pastries and coffee, but they also wanted soup, salads and sandwiches,” Ms. Maloney said. “So I said whatever we offer, it has to be food that’s worth every bite.”
That phrase has become The Eat Shop’s guidestar.
“It began with one of my neighbors in Chicago,” she said. “We were sitting over a glass of wine one night, and she was saying ‘Your food’s so good. It’s worth the carbs. It’s worth the calories.’ Then I said ‘It’s worth every bite,’ and that stuck. I’ve never changed.”
After The Eat Shop opened at Boyd Law School in August 2023, Ms. Maloney said, the law school dean emailed other UI department heads extolling The Eat Shop’s virtues. Representatives of the College of Public Health reached out, and The Eat Shop opened its third location there in August 2024.
“That wasn’t as hard as the law school,” Ms. Maloney said, “because we had trained staff that could float between locations. They’re basically the same operation. And the catering business at both locations is off the charts. I didn’t even want to get into catering initially, but we’ve done a 200-box lunch order, and we do 25 to 40 a lot. It’s become a significant part of our business.”
Then just as the Public Health operation was launching, the Coffee Emporium in Iowa City came under new ownership, and the new owners reached out to Ms. Maloney as well.
“So we decided to move forward with them as well,” Ms. Maloney said. “Now we sell to their (four) locations. They added each location kind of slowly. We did Tiffin and North Liberty first, then Iowa City. And now we’ve added the location at Iowa River Landing. Now my wholesale business is a huge part of our main business.”
The biggest expansion, though, was still to come.
Decision to open new Marion location
Opening a second bakery location wasn’t an overnight decision.
“We had been looking at expanding for about a year and a half,” Ms. Maloney said. “Our Solon business has continued to grow, we’ve picked up wholesale accounts. We started expanding into the university. All of the pastries are still being made in Solon, but it’s only 1,400 square feet. It’s getting tighter and tighter, and cold storage is getting tighter.”
But expanding to Marion wasn’t always a foregone conclusion. Ms. Maloney looked at locations in Coralville and North Liberty, but “they were just strip malls, very spread out, not walk-friendly.”
When Ms. Maloney visited the area, she considered the former Marion Maid-Rite building, “which is beautiful,” and the former Sykora Bakery building in Cedar Rapids’ Czech Village.
But after touring the Broad and Main space at 1107 Seventh Ave., she knew she had found the right space.
“This was way bigger than what I had originally planned,” she said. “We were trying to find something around 2,000 square feet, which really isn’t that much bigger than Solon, but this was over 3,300. When we walked in here, it was so beautiful and perfect, and it was an empty canvas, which is where I thrive, because I can visualize it all. And with the (Central Plaza) going here, and the amount of investment that Marion had already done in Uptown, it’s so cool. It just had that ‘it’ factor.”
Since the Marion plans became widely known, Ms. Maloney said she’s heard many supportive comments.
“People come into the Solon shop all the time and say they’re excited for Marion,” Ms. Maloney said. “We’re so excited for Marion. And even when I’ve shown my closest friends inspiration pictures of what I want to do, I don’t think this is what they’re envisioning.”
Atmosphere
The ethos of the new Eat Shop will resemble the Solon location, with a clean, white look accented with striped indoor awnings, large windows on the exterior walls and exposed wood beams, evoking the feel of a French sidewalk cafe.
“I wanted black and white awnings because, in my mind, that’s what a bakery should be,” Ms. Maloney said. “I wanted them on the outside of the Solon building, but Christy Brandt said no awnings outside. So I decided to make them inside. That’s where it started, and now that’s my thing.”
The Marion location will also feature a large viewing window to the bakery space itself, allowing customers to watch the pastries and baked goods being prepared.
“My mom couldn’t believe we were going to have a window so people can see what we’re doing back there,” Ms. Maloney said. “She’s like, ‘It’s going to be a mess.’ But that’s what happens when you’re baking. It is a mess. The baking tables are right up against those windows on purpose, so people can walk by and see us baking. It’s my favorite thing, because we like to see the customers. We like to interact.”

The new restaurant will offer indoor seating for 40 patrons, plus a seasonal outdoor patio with a seating capacity of 24.
Custom-ordered chandeliers add an air of glitz, and woven chairs bring a casual balance to the space.
A separate room, which Ms. Maloney calls a decorator shop, will be available for special events or small parties, including an opportunity for drop-in baking classes or a make-your-own option featuring the products being made in the bakery that day.
“You’ll be able to roll out the dough, then we’ll bake it for you,” Ms. Maloney said.
The bakery will be open seven days a week, with extended hours on nights and weekends during Uptown Marion events. Special offerings will include charcuterie boards, alcohol-infused desserts or alcoholic beverage pairings with Eat Shop fare.
“Some cool stuff,” Ms. Maloney promised. “Different things than the regular menus.”
Several pieces of decor will evoke The Eat Shop’s historical roots. Ms. Maloney’s great-aunt owned Mary Ann’s Eat Shop on First Avenue in Cedar Rapids from 1936 to 1950, and her secretary desk, a 1940s-era telephone booth rescued from a Des Moines restaurant, framed newspaper articles and other memorabilia will be featured in a special nook near the restaurant’s front entrance.
“With the old phone booth, I think that a lot of kids have probably never even seen something like that,” Ms. Maloney said. “It’ll be wired so that when you close the door, the exhaust fan and light will turn on, and we’ll encourage people to take pictures in there.”
What’s on the menu?
The decor won’t be the only time-tested feature of The Eat Shop in Marion.
Many of the recipes Ms. Maloney uses in her products have been carried forward through generations, including the best-selling cinnamon rolls, authentic kolaches, pecan rolls, cookies, gourmet pies and other pastries.
“Our best sellers are from my great-aunt’s recipes, more than 100 years old,” she said.
But there will also be a wide variety of soups, sandwiches and salads, as well as breakfast items. An extensive children’s menu will provide high-quality items. Featured lunch options will include the Very Cherry ham and cheese sandwich, with homemade cherry chutney atop ham and cheddar cheese, and a Holiday Turkey with carved turkey, homemade cranberry chutney spread and Havarti cheese on a toasted croissant.

One thing that separates The Eat Shop’s baked goods from many competitors is the quality of ingredients, including Kerrygold butter, real vanilla extract and fresh-cracked eggs. The products are expensive, but the results are worth it, Ms. Maloney believes.
“When you bite into someone else’s pastry that was made with inferior ingredients, at the end, there’s a weird manufactured taste,” she said. “That is something we just won’t do. I’ve eaten this stuff my entire life. My mom baked this stuff. We jokingly say at The Eat Shop that calories don’t count. Our products are full of calories, but there’s no preservatives. So when you’re eating our chocolate chip cookies, I would say your body will thank you more than eating a box of Chips Ahoy. You could tell the difference.”
Those higher-quality ingredients come at a higher price than large-scale competitors, Ms. Maloney acknowledges.
“If you’re looking for that price point, we’re never going to hit it for you,” she said. “I would say we’re at the very high end. We were really high when we first opened in Solon, and now I feel like other bakeries have come up to where we’re at.”
The quantities of ingredients are substantial. The Eat Shop in Solon already uses nearly 100 pounds of Kerrygold butter and 300 pounds of flour per week. Once the Marion shop opens, Ms. Maloney said she may be using as much as 300 pounds of butter weekly, depending on demand.
The Eat Shop in Marion will also be offering a wide variety of house-baked breads. Ms. Maloney said she and her bakery staff have been experimenting with formulations, but plan to offer focaccia, baguettes, croissants and more.
Not all the experiments have been successful.
“We’ve had people ask about selling loaves of bread eventually,” Ms. Maloney said. “Yes, we will get there, but day one, probably not. We plan to do it, but we’re not going to bite off more than we can chew and fall short.”
Ms. Maloney said she welcomes honest feedback from customers.
“We will not compromise on quality, but we encourage people to tell us if something’s wrong,” she said. “Mistakes happen. We get new bakers. Sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way that you want. Just come tell us, because sometimes we don’t know. People feel bad telling us, but how else would we know? We can’t bite into every cinnamon roll.”
Opening plans
The Eat Shop has already hosted holiday “pop-ups” in Marion for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, and Ms. Maloney said she’s targeting Feb. 1 for a full opening, with the possibility of a soft opening period later in January.
Hours are expected to be 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., seven days a week, compared with Monday to Friday hours in Solon. The Marion site will also be open extended hours for certain special occasions.
Once the Marion location is fully operational, Ms. Maloney said she may have as many as 50 employees on staff.