Mother-daughter duo Faith and Misty Baird pose in front of the chalkboard at their new store in Cornelia. The store opens this Friday, October 18. (Hadley Cottingham/Now Habersham)
Faith Baird was born a 15.6-ounce handful of joy in January of 1998. 21 years later, she is bringing joy to her community in the form of something a little smaller: brownies.
On Oct. 16, 2017, Faith and her mother Misty Baird launched their Facebook page for Brownies by Faith. After two years in business, the mother-daughter duo will open their brick and mortar shop in Cornelia.
“God is allowing a new chapter in our story to be told…”
“It all really started way back in 2016, when she [Faith] was a Junior in high school. We just started talking with her about what she wanted to do when she graduated from high school,” recounts Misty. At the time, Faith was enrolled in the special education program at Habersham Central High School.
“They [the students] went on these job sites where you would earn your life skills diploma, and it helped them to get an idea of what was out there as far as choices for a job,” Misty explains. “One of their job sites was Ingles.”
Faith tells Now Habersham that she fell in love with the Ingles Bakery and chose to work there whenever she could.
“We talked back and forth, of course, for many, many months and she finally said she wanted to bake. And we talked about what she might want to bake, and she chose brownies,” says Misty. Brownies weren’t unfamiliar to the baking duo. Misty had made brownies for her friends, family and sold them in a sub shop. “It had been what I had done pretty much the whole time she was growing up.”
“One day we said ‘okay, let’s see how this is going to go,’ and we just started playing around in the kitchen, and she totally loved it,” Misty says. She asked her daughter if baking brownies was what she was sure she wanted to do, and Faith said yes. That was when they decided to launch their Facebook page.
A new chapter
“We started putting our brownies out there, […] selling them to people we knew, and it just kind of grew from there,” explains Misty. Brownies by Faith presented their treats to the community at the 2018 and 2019 Cornelia Big Red Apple Festival and 2019 Chattahoochee Mountain Fair.
The mother-daughter team agree that they’re almost always on the same page. Working with family can be tough, but Faith says that for herself and her mother, “It’s good.” Misty adds, “She [Faith] can read me and I can read her.”
“Everywhere we go we have been so well-received by our community. They have just wrapped their arms around us and have loved on us and have supported us, I mean, it’s been amazing,” Misty says.
The Baird family felt led to turn the old tanning salon next to Creekside Cleaners in Cornelia into the storefront for Brownies by Faith. “God is allowing a new chapter in our story to be told,” says Misty, “and through the brownies, we’re able to let people come into our lives and see how good God is, and how good He can be.”
Brownies by Faith will host their grand opening this Friday, Oct. 18, beginning with a ribbon cutting at 10 a.m. The store is located at 504 Irvin Street in downtown Cornelia.
By: Hadley Cottingham, Now Habersham
