Bread, wine will be the center of faith-based café opening in Stanislaus County
The community will be breaking bread and sharing wine when a faith-based business opens in Hughson.
Jamie Ellak created Angelic Wines LLC in 2022 and assumed the name of Nama’s Kitchen for her home business a year later. She’s now combining her two passions, sourdough baking and wine pairing, into one business: Nama’s Kitchen Café and Wine Bar.
“We have our wine license because I do gift baskets for real estate agents for closing gifts and such,” Ellak said. “I found out I was really good at (making bread), and started selling bread in 2023.’”
With a Class B Cottage Food Operation permit through Stanislaus County, Ellak has been making sourdough products in her home’s second family room, which she converted to a kitchen with commercial equipment, and selling them for porch pickup and at markets. Her products are also featured on the menu of Modesto’s new no-alcohol bar.
When looking for a place to open a café, Ellak said outside Hughson was not an option.
“We’ve lived in Hughson since 2004,” she said. “This is our community and one of the reasons why it’s taken us so long to get into a place is because I refuse to open anywhere else.”
Her patience paid off and the opportunity to open in the heart of downtown presented itself when a flower shop closed. Ellak said she accepted the offer to lease the building before she even knew what the price would be.
Though less than 400 square feet, Ellak is confident in her and her architect’s plans to make it work, including being ADA compliant.
Plans for café include not interfering with existing Hughson businesses
The café, at 6943 Hughson Avenue, will have seating for between 16 and 22 people.
To save kitchen space, baking will continue to take place at Ellak’s approved home kitchen. Items such as eggs, bacon and sausage for the menu that will include breakfast and signature sandwiches will be cooked in a ventless, convection speed oven at the café.
“It will be a very small, limited menu because we’re going to have very small, limited space,” Ellak said.
In addition to limiting the menu due to space, Ellak said she will not make items that other Hughson restaurants serve. For example, she will not make flatbreads, though operating a sourdough-focused café, because Pizza Factory serves them.
“Because of us being so community-driven, our main thing is we don’t want to impede or infringe on any other businesses in town,” Ellak said. “We want to be completely different so that people have choices.”
She also said she wants to cater to the community’s schedule, so her plan is to open from 7 a.m. to noon, then re-open at 3 p.m. Around 5 p.m., she’ll close coffee service and open the wine bar.
The wine bar will use Napa Technology, which is a wine preservation and dispensing system that runs off argon gas and is self-pouring.
Nama’s Kitchen Café and Wine Bar will also serve beer and cider, though none that Beers & Beards carry.
“We don’t want to leave any of our kids out, because school gets out and high schoolers are going to come for cookies,” Ellak said. “I want the kids to feel like this is an environment that they can come in, which is exactly why we will not serve wine until after 5 p.m., and our wine machines will have covers on them so you cannot access them at all until 5 o’clock hits.”
Faith at the heart of sourdough business
The café and wine bar will open in early fall. While the exact opening date is up in the air, one thing is certain: Nama’s Kitchen is “very much a faith-based business,” Ellak said.
“We are going to be a place where people can come in and feel comfortable whether they are Christians, whether they are not Christians,” she said. “It does not matter to us. We want everybody to feel like they have a place to have that sense of community and good, nutritious food.”
Ellak said she will have a sign in the café that tells people they can ask for prayer, and participating employees will pray with them on the spot. There will also be a station to write down prayer requests.
Nama’s Kitchen employees do not have to be faith-based, she said, and if they are not comfortable praying then they don’t have to. Ellak said her goal is to create a space where people are comfortable and they feel they belong.
“Everything that I have done so far to get where we’re at is completely a God thing,” she said. “Every door that’s opened, we’ve not pushed for. We’ve just sat there and we’ve listened, and we want our business to be the same model of that.”
This story was originally published June 10, 2026 at 3:58 PM.
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