COLUMBUS— They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

One central Ohio business is showing just how relevant a trendy bakery and coffee shop can be with their mega-hit cafe, Fox in the Snow. 

Lauren Culley, Fox in the Snow co-owner, explained how their business evolved over time.

“Originally the shop was gonna be a coffee shop that sold pastries and it ended up becoming the bakery that sold coffee is what we always joke…our accountant said something to us before we opened that I think about all the time.…which is, you can have a lot of plans for your business but your business and your customers will decide what it will become,” Culley said.

And this business has become not only known throughout Columbus.

It has risen to the top of culinary lists across the country.

Most recently, Food and Wine included Fox in the Snow as a cafe must when they named Columbus as a top 10 place to go and eat in 2019.

The husband and wife owners said the idea began brewing when they were visiting Culley's parents in Columbus from their then home and workplace, New York City.

"She wanted to go get pastries and coffee and suggested that to her parents, and her parents kind of told her that there wasn’t a place like that in Columbus," said Jeff Excell, co-owner of the Fox in the Snow. "So, the idea was planted in her head to open a business like the one we were working at in New York.”

It was a vision that quickly came to life.

“Spent that entire year building out our first shop in Italian Village and hoping that someone would walk in the door…which surprisingly they did," said Excell.

But on most Saturdays, it's difficult getting through the doors because there is a line wrapped around the building with people waiting to get a pastry, cup of coffee, or their now famous egg sandwich—which includes toasted ciabatta bread, candied bacon, Swiss cheese, arugula, Dijon cream sauce and egg.

But not just any egg—a souffléd egg.

Something Culley said hatched from a creative way to be minimalistic.

“Because I knew that we would have a really tiny staff and we couldn’t have somebody that was doing eggs to order…so I had to find a way to do eggs like 20 and 25 at a time, and so I would soufflé large things of eggs when I was recipe testing and we really liked it, we thought it was amazing so we added it to the menu," said Culley. "We thought we’d sell maybe 25 of them on a Saturday and at New Albany alone we sold probably 400.”

Beyond the yolk, their pastries are top-notch.

Some of the signatures include the cinnamon roll, sticky bun, and scone—all made from scratch.

They've also created an environment that looks straight out of Pinterest, and is surprisingly Wi-Fi free. 

“Let’s make sure the coffee is delicious, the food and pastries are delicious, let’s make sure that people wanna come here to an environment that is not their house but a nice environment to be in and is lively and not full of laptops…it’s full of people talking and interacting,” said Excell.

A business that began with one location has now expanded to 3 in just 4-1//2 years, with plans for more Fox in the Snows in the works.

“We keep getting requests for Fox in the Snows in different neighborhoods and we want to make that happen," said Culley. "We want to make sure there’s one in every neighborhood, we wanna make sure our staff has opportunities to become managers. We wanna make sure that the business gets to be what the business and the customers decide what it will be."

Right now Fox in the Snow has locations in the Italian village, German village, and they most recently opened up shop in New Albany.

The owners tell us the next location their looking at is in the northern area of Columbus, close to Dublin.

For a full menu and hours you can visit their website.