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BooBoo Bean Bakery and Café brings tasty pastries and more to northwest Fresno

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Natali Carrera

Natali Carrera is a devoted coffee addict who also loves her nine-year-old son, husband of 14 years and bargain hunting at Target. She works full time with ValleyPBS as their Director of Educational Services and is also a freelance writer and YouTube vlogger (as a hobby). She's been told "bubbly" is the best descriptor of her personality, though she wonders if what people really mean is that she talks too much. Natali is a lifelong Fresno resident and Fresno State grad.
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Jenny Rivera has a natural knack for baking. Her friends and family have benefited from her skills with a spatula and mixer for years, and when the opportunity presented itself last fall for Rivera to have her own bakery in a great location, she took it as a sign it was time to go all in and share her talents with the greater Fresno community.

Rivera’s new bakery, BooBoo Bean Bakery and Café, has been open just over two weeks, but the cozy space—whose name comes from her son’s nickname and her chihuahua, Lulu Bean—has already attracted a steady stream of regular customers.

BooBoo Bean Bakery

BooBoo Bean Bakery and Café is now open at Pavilion West

BooBoo Bean Bakery

A peek inside BooBoo Bean Bakery and Café

BooBoo Bean offers a variety of pastries and cookies, including specialty Italian items such as the Chimelli, a twisted, mildly sweet cookie with a hint of citrus, and the Italian Wedding Cookie, which is sweeter, dense, chewy, and drizzled with a light, lemon-y glaze. Rivera’s massive croissants look mouthwatering in the bakery case, and her butter toffee samples prove her skill at not just baking, but candy making as well.

BooBoo Bean Bakery

Rivera’s Italian Wedding Cookies (center) are among her best-sellers.

BooBoo Bean Bakery

An Italian specialty baked good: the Chimelli

On her Facebook page, Rivera claims to be on a mission to “perfect the cupcake,” and during my family’s recent visit to Boo Boo Bean, it seems many patrons feel she’s already achieved that, as cupcakes were flying out of the case due to demand. A steady stream of customers flowed in and out of the café the entire time I was there, which was a little over an hour on a Saturday afternoon.

BooBoo Bean makes delicious crisp-on-the-outside, dense-on-the-inside homemade waffles that are served right off the griddle and piled high with your choice of sweet or savory toppings. According to Rivera, the Cookie Butter Waffle is a best-seller.

BooBoo Bean Bakery

The waffle my son and I enjoyed

BooBoo Bean Bakery

My husband, who’s following a low-carb diet, enjoyed the crust-less fritata

In addition to baked goods and waffles, BooBoo Bean offers a variety of salads, sandwiches, and wraps. The Harvest Apple Salad is a customer favorite, as is the savory and lightly spicy Angry Tri-Tip Sandwich.

BooBoo Bean Bakery

My son’s Angry Tri-Tip Sandwich (plus bacon, because, well… he loves bacon)

BooBoo Bean also offers coffee and espresso beverages, including familiar favorites such as flavored lattes, mochas, and frozen, blended frappes. The signature drink offering, the Boo Boo Bean Latte, features a homemade lavender-honey syrup for a unique and delicate flavor.

Prices at BooBoo Bean are very reasonable, with artisan-quality baked goods starting at just $1.50. There’s also a loyalty card—each coffee drink earns a stamp, and the 11th drink is on the house.

If you’re looking for a great new place to enjoy a pastry and coffee with a friend, or a tasty lunch made with care, you can visit BooBoo Bean in the Pavilion West shopping center on the southwest corner of Bullard and West in northwest Fresno.

You can also learn more about BooBoo Bean by following them on Facebook and Instagram.

Locally Owned RIDE54 Opens This Week and FresYes Takes It For a Spin

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Natali Carrera

Natali Carrera is a devoted coffee addict who also loves her nine-year-old son, husband of 14 years and bargain hunting at Target. She works full time with ValleyPBS as their Director of Educational Services and is also a freelance writer and YouTube vlogger (as a hobby). She's been told "bubbly" is the best descriptor of her personality, though she wonders if what people really mean is that she talks too much. Natali is a lifelong Fresno resident and Fresno State grad.
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A new cycling studio opens this week, and thanks to its smart-thinking and customer-savvy Fresno owners, it will stand out from any cycling studio you’ve been to before.

Melissa Lev, a big fan of indoor cycling fitness classes (aka spin classes), and her husband, Layne, had long considered opening a local franchise of regional spin studios here in town. The Levs had headed pretty far down that path when they realized that a franchise would leave their business lacking something they felt their potential customers would value—strength training.

It was this customer-centric line of thinking that led to the couple creating their own brand of cycling studio, RIDE54, which officially opens its doors Thursday, Jan. 26.

RIDE54

RIDE54 is located next to Dave & Busters at Friant and 41

RIDE54

RIDE54 is family owned and built from the ground up by Layne and Melissa Lev

“Melissa loves cycling, and we both thought opening a studio in Fresno would be really great since we didn’t have any of the larger studios here in town,” said Layne, “But for the price, we felt it was important to offer something that allowed people to train in cardio and strength.”

In order to bring this dual approach to Fresno fitness enthusiasts, the Levs built a studio that includes both a state-of-the-art spin class equipped with theater-style rows of top-of-the-line spin cycles and customized studio lighting that changes with the music and workout phase, and a pristine TRX classroom just a few feet away. It comes as no surprise that the Levs paid great attention to design as they build their studio—Layne also founded Hundred10, a Fresno-based design and branding business that has successfully showcased numerous local businesses since 2007. (RIDE54’s website also is, of course, very cool.)

RIDE54

Rows of bikes await you in the spin classroom

RIDE54

TRX (which stands for Total-body Resistance Exercise) was invented by a Navy Seal and allows participants to work out using their own body weight as resistance. By utilizing the TRX resistance cable and band apparatus, and adjusting body positioning and movement, individuals with a variety of exercise experience can get a great strength-training workout that is appropriately challenging for their needs.

RIDE54

TRX training offers additional strength workout opportunities at RIDE54

RIDE54

Layne Lev shows me how the TRX apparatuses are easily adjusted and modified to meet each person’s needs

Prior to the studio’s grand opening, I had the opportunity to try a cycling class at RIDE54 along with other members of the FresYes team and, well… I still am unable to walk as I type this. I kid! I kid.

But seriously, it was a fantastic workout that really challenged me and even engaged my upper body more than I anticipated through the incorporation of hand weights and seated push-ups. The music helped me to stick it out when waves of exhaustion threatened to kick in, and by the end of the class, I had that great post-exercise high that leaves you feeling energized rather than worn out.

RIDE54

The FresYes team, post-spin class, nice and sweaty!

My experience with indoor cycling is limited, but based on what I saw, RIDE54 seems to really offer an exceptional program. Layne shared that he and Melissa worked hard to recruit the best of the best when it came to instructors, and their team has spent the last six months together every weekend perfecting their routines (on twenty spin bikes that were parked in the Levs’ dining room!).

If you’re interested in taking classes at RIDE54, pricing is flexible. You can either purchase classes individually or in groups and use them when your schedule allows or, if you prefer, you can sign up for an unlimited monthly or yearly membership.

New members can take advantage of discounted pricing on unlimited first weeks or months of classes, too. Also, there will be free, 30-minute fundamentals courses on Saturdays for those who are brand new to indoor cycling classes and would like to learn more about the methodology.

Learn More at RIDE54’s Open House

RIDE54 will host an open house this Thursday from 4-7 p.m. There will be food and drinks, and even a Lululemon Athletica trunk show, so if you’d like a chance to check out the studio and TRX classroom and learn more about classes, you should stop in.

For more information including class schedules, pricing, instructor info, and more, visit RIDE54’s website here.

Clovis Couple Returns to Valley to Put Down New Roots

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Kendra Gilbert

Writer at FresYes.com
Kendra Gilbert is a writer born and raised in Clovis. She has written for publications from Boston to Los Angeles and loves writing about fashion and people most of all. The abbreviated list of things she enjoys outside of writing includes: thrifting, photography, harmonica, beer, movies, hiking and skee ball.
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Root. A Community General Store

The number of people who believe in downtown Fresno, and are willing to make a contribution to its revitalization, grew by two last week. On Thursday during ArtHop, Kirk and Cassey James opened the doors to their Fulton Mall shop, Root. Sandwiched between Peeves and Parsley Garden Cafe, the couple’s general store and print making studio fills out the small corner of the mall that has become ground zero for the revitalization movement. 

The owners after a successful opening / Courtesy: @root_general on Instagram

The owners after a successful opening/ Instagram: @root_general

Kirk and Cassey met as teenagers at Buchanan High School in Clovis. After graduation, they would both go to Los Angeles for school and spend years there pursuing various creative ventures in fashion design and styling. On a visit home, the couple realized Fresno might hold more potential for them than L.A. and, after finding the perfect house, they moved back and set up shop (as it would turn out, literally) in the Valley.

Click to see homes in this area!

With Root, what’s old is new again. The general store concept, something often associated with the Old West or small town America, has been made over by consciously-minded creatives. At Root, there’s an emphasis on locally-made artisan goods, whether that be beauty products or a pair of jeans. There are also books, magazines, jewelry, and items for your home. The design studio within the shop will offer various print making services and monthly workshops will be held so that not only can you buy things, but you can learn to make them yourself.

As for the name of the shop, you can probably guess the meaning behind it. The couple says it’s a reference to the roots they are returning to and the new ones they hope to put down. You might also say they are Root-ing for downtown. And it’s clear that other businesses in the area are rooting for Kirk and Cassey, too.

From the Root Instagram Page

Here, the couple talks about the inspiration behind the shop, the competition they entered that forced them to really focus their business plan, and what they hope people will get out of their shop.