Where Good Friends Meet

There are a lot of things to plan for when moving to a new city: renting a UHaul, forwarding personal mail, driving the most efficient route to a new job. But few people plan for or even consider what perhaps is the most important aspect to a successful transition to a new city: making friends.

Making new friends is hard in any city but especially so in small towns and cities where friends have known each other since grade school, raised children together, or gone to the same church for decades. In communities like Baton Rouge, friends are built-in to a rich life often centered around family.

Making friends is further complicated by our obsession with our digital devices. Go to most any place, including a restaurant or bar where you might expect to meet someone, and you’ll notice people’s heads bent towards their phones, scrolling past social media posts and videos. Today, “friends” are often people you’ve never met IRL.

Still, there are reasons and even places where a newcomer can meet friends with whom to have an in-person conversation. Stephanie Hansen of Les Amis Bake Shoppe andJames Hyfield of Red Stick Reads own two such businesses in Baton Rouge.

Stephanie Hansen, Owner of Les Amis Bakeshop, bakes special occasion cakes from family recipes that she transforms into works of art as well as cupcakes for that sweet snack and daily orders for a long list of wholesale clients

Following in the footsteps of her aunt and grandmother and using family recipes, Stephanie Hansen opened Les Amis Bake Shoppe in August 2013 with the help and support of her mom. What started as a weekend operation baking and selling cupcakes has grown over the last ten years into a retail shop and a commercial supplier specializing in French macarons and made-to-order cakes, selling wholesale to restaurants, hotels and venues like L’Auberge Casino.

Les Amis, which is French for “the friends” increases its own circle of friends and customers with a move from Coursey Boulevard to Downtown Baton Rouge where it welcomes locals, newcomers, and tourists alike with their slogan “Where Good Friends Meet.”

If, by no fault of your own, you find yourself downtown at Les Amis without company but in need of companionship, then what goes better with a slice of cake than a good book?

James Hyfield, Co-Owner, with his wife, Tere, of Baton Rouge boutique book store, Red Stick Reads. “Dark Romance” is a popular genre at the bookstore these days and evidently, according to James, if you don’t know what “Dark Romance” is you may be the better for it

After years of working in management in food service at Whole Foods, James Hyfield yearned for a different career. He had always enjoyed reading, so with his wife Tere, James started small with a pop-up at the Mid City Makers Market that combined his love for books and his experience in food service. Prior to Covid, James and Tere ran eight to nine pop-ups around the city before in 2019 they opened their Red Stick Reads brick and mortar store on Eugene St., now located in a renovated warehouse off Government Street, near the Baton Rouge Music Studios.

Today, Red Stick Reads bills itself as a gift shop designed as a bookstore where you can meet book-loving friends at weekly storytime events, author talks, and poetry readings.

Jimmy Swaggart’s 90th, and last, birthday cake, a creation of Stephanie Hansen’s Les Amis Bakeshop. Two months after celebrating his birthday, Swaggart passed away. Stephanie says there was no causal connection to his consuming cake

Some of our most vivid childhood memories are of birthday parties with multi-tiered, frosted cake with candles, small gifts wrapped in bright paper, and a gaggle of our closest friends. If we’re lucky, those same friends have celebrated other, equally memorable milestones with us over many years. But, if not, businesses like Les Amis Bake Shoppe, Red Stick Reads, and even Out to Lunch offer opportunities to make new friends and create lasting memories.