Flour Box originally opened in 2017 as a bakery. Two years later, Flour Box expanded into the neighboring storefront and started the gift shop portion, with gifts and crafts supplied by local artisans.
“People would come in, grab a cookie, and go next door and shop,” Hawkes said.
In 2023, the bakery portion of the combined shop closed, citing rising costs and damage to the kitchen due to a burst pipe.
During this period the gift shop expanded, and is now home to 60 different artisans, offering everything from wood turned pens and several kinds of jewelry to jams, jellies, homemade candy, clothing, soaps, lotions and plants.
“The cool thing is, we don’t duplicate vendors. So if you’re a candle maker, you will be our only candle maker,” Hawkes said.
Over the last year, the shop’s foot traffic suffered significantly due to a sidewalk replacement, and ongoing renovations directly outside the storefront, Hawkes said.
Credit: Natalie Jones
Credit: Natalie Jones
“It was just horrible. People didn’t know we were open,” she said. “And if we don’t have foot traffic, we don’t have sales.”
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the cancellation of the city’s 2025 Spring Fling, which sees portions of downtown Xenia closed for an annual festival and craft show, which supplies a significant portion of revenue for Flour’s vendors, Hawkes said.
Hawkes said she was reluctant to close.
“I didn’t want to disappoint my vendors,” she said. “They needed a platform to sell out of because almost all of them work another job, and this is their hobby. I was kind of like their landing ground, where they would start, so I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
Flour Box will return in some form or another, Hawkes said, as she and her family plan to take some time to rest, recharge, and look for another retail space in the Miami Valley.
“We were very, very lucky to be there since 2017,” she said. “Most small businesses don’t last that long ... We got the opportunity to have a shop for a long time and we’ve met so many cool people and I think I’m going to take those friends with me.”
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