Red Cedar Cafe, a small and cozy restaurant in Brookfield Plaza, has developed a local following in the two years since it opened. The cafe sells a variety of baked goods, soups, sandwiches and specialty coffee drinks. A love for customer service, and a passion for baking that stems back to helping her mother in the kitchen, pushed Anderson to the food industry.

“My very first job was working in a pizza place — I’ve always been in the food industry,” Anderson, a DeWitt resident, said. “I enjoy the creativity of it.”

In 2008, Anderson, 46, worked as an assistant dining room director for Akers Hall. After, she became the operations supervisor at the MSU Bakers. Anderson worked with MSU for about three years before deciding that she wanted to do something on her own.

“I took those two worlds of being in the cafeteria and the bakery and combined them to what we have now at the Red Cedar Cafe,” Anderson said. “Being across from campus, I’m still interacting with a lot of students (and) professors.”

Anderson modeled Red Cedar Cafe after the chain-restaurant Panera Bread. The difference is, Red Cedar Cafe makes its own baked goods from scratch every morning, she said.

“I just thought there was a niche for a locally-owned business,” she said.

Anderson does everything in the Red Cedar Cafe, from serving customers to dropping off catering orders to baking, when needed. From a carrot cake recipe that belongs to her mother-in-law, to the sinfully delicious Scotcheroos, a crispy rice square that has peanut butter in it and a chocolate and butterscotch layer, that was suggested by an employee, the recipes at Red Cedar Cafe are a mosaic of contributions from multiple people in Anderson’s life.

“We make something and huddle around it and try it,” she said. “If it’s something we all like, it’s something our customers will like as well.”

Anderson makes a point of choosing as many local vendors as possible. Aside from a desire to keep dollars within the community, Anderson’s mindset has also been influenced by the heavy customer support she has received as a local business owner.

“People really do want to support local businesses,” she said. “People will ask me, ‘How are you doing? How’s business?’ (and they’ll also say), ‘We support you.’ … I feel supported by East Lansing and the surrounding areas.”