By Steve Van Kooten
Who can say no to a brownie, or how about some cake? It's hard to pass on a treat, especially when it's homemade.
Guttenberg residents should be very well aware of that after this past Thursday because the Meschers, Alexis, 12, and Grace, 10, along with their mother Beth, just held their annual bake sale.
The bake sale took place at their home on South First Street starting at 10 a.m. The money raised from the sale helps purchase school supplies for the Family Resource Center.
"We wanted to help kids our age," said Alexis. "We go to the Family Resource Center, and we see people coming in every hour [who] need food and stuff. It's cool when you volunteer; you're actually helping people a lot."
The well-worn idiom is "the road to a person's heart is through their stomach," and, if so, the Meschers have learned that appealing to people's sweet tooth is like taking the express lane.
According to Beth, the girls have raised more than $10,000 since they started in 2020. The sale brought in $600 in 2020, $1,000 in 2021, $2,600 in 2022, $3,600 in 2023 and approximately $3,000 this past year.
"That's our goal. That's what we made last year," said Beth.
Money is donated to the Family Resource Center in Guttenberg for school supplies and hygiene kits.
"The Family Resource Center gets what they need. We used to buy it, but then they might have too many notebooks and need 20 more calculators, so we just give [the money] to them now," said Beth.
During their first sale, they decided to donate the proceeds to COVID relief and school supplies for families. The stand was a hit—they ran out of baked goods on their first day.
"The next year, they wanted to do it again, so we just did it for school supplies. Then after they made so much money, we decided to add another thing. We gave some to the activity department at the care center for new bingo cards and different activities," said Beth.
In 2023 and 2024, the girls donated half of the proceeds for school supplies and the other half to help those in medical crisis.
The Meschers put a lot of time and work into making their bake sale and lemonade stand happen each year: they make most of the treats, package everything for sale and purchase the necessary supplies.
"Homemade" is an important ingredient to the success of the Meschers' sale. Grace said they make most of the goods they sell.
Otherwise, it's our family, like our grandma," added Alexis.
It has gotten to the point that the girls are getting longtime, returning customers. They've been selling treats for long enough that they get requests for specific items.
"We had a couple of people call family members from out of town and tell them, 'If you want so and so, it's back.' So, that's cool to see that your baking skills are good," said Beth.
Beth and her daughters encourage anyone to volunteer at the Family Resource Center.
"The Family Resource Center is always looking for volunteers," said Beth. "They have so many different programs that anybody can help there."
"Yeah, we'll just walk there and ask what they need help with, and they've always got something to do," said Alexis.
