If you enjoy a little elbow room when going out for coffee and pastries, breakfast, or lunch check out Sweet Cravings Bakery and Bistro, 397 N. Main St. in Moab.

When Cinda Culton opened the bakery-bistro ten years ago she wanted a place where you could sit with a friend and enjoy coffee and conversation in a roomy environment, without a line of people winding around tables from the door to the counter – as she said she found elsewhere in town.

“Everything was so close, small and intimate,” she said. “We wanted a place where you didn’t feel you had to leave quickly,” to make room for new customers.

Sweet Cravings moved two years ago from its first location where the bakery-bistro could seat 20, to its current 5,000 square-feet building with seating for 50 people.

Culton trained staff members how to bake and cook from scratch. Half of their goodies come from longtime family recipes – birthday cakes, pies, cookies and special desserts.

“I call it mom’s home baking,” she said.

In fact, her mother helps out with taking orders, and “gets thrown into baking now and then,” said Culton.

Some of Sweet Cravings most popular items include Tres Leche – a Mexican dessert and a family recipe from one of Culton’s employees. Tres Leche is a vanilla cake with three different kinds of milk poured over it after it’s baked to create a super moist, dense pastry.

Other favorite items include wild blueberry, and raspberry white chocolate scones. Also popular are the cinnamon rolls, and the banana split cake – made with fresh pineapple, strawberries, chocolate ganache, homemade whipped cream and banana cake.

The breakfast menu includes egg burritos, paninis, bagels and other savory items like the Hot Ham N’ Cheddar on a homemade roll.

For lunch there’s an array of sandwiches, paninis, wraps and salads with various side dishes – such as applesauce made from a recipe from Culton’s mom, or coleslaw from a great-aunt’s recipe. It’s a vinegar-based (not mayonnaise) coleslaw, making it safe to take with you on the trail on a hot day, said Culton.

In 2019, the Moab Chamber of Commerce named Sweet Cravings “Business of the Year.”

The community-minded shop has donated desserts for the WabiSabi Thanksgiving community meal for the past 10 years. And, in 2020, Culton and her staff prepared the entire meal for 400 people. When the community gathering was canceled in 2021 due to the pandemic, Sweet Cravings cooked and packaged 200 to-go containers with meals that were delivered to homebound seniors and medical personnel working on that day.

For more information visit: www.cravemoab.com or www.facebook.com/cravemoab.
Sweet Cravings can be reached at: 435-259-8983.