“I realized I wanted to expand my business and open a storefront bakery,” she says. One evening on a date night, she and Kevin decided to look at the building at the corner of 8th and Church Streets. Although they determined that the space was not the right fit for their vision, it was then that Rachel knew it was time for her to go to culinary school and she enrolled at the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in Austin.

At the same time, a friend suggested that the couple look at a house for sale that is now the home of Sweet Lemon Kitchen. The Cummins family went on a trip to California that summer and “On that vacation, we looked at many cute places for inspiration. We decided to open the upstairs as an inn, and remodel the downstairs as a cafe/bakery,” Rachel says. 

“It was a God thing,” she explains. “We needed to sell our rental property to buy the Church Street house, so Kevin listed it on Craig’s List thinking it was a longshot, but we got an offer the first weekend it was listed.” So we knew that was a “yes!”

Once the Inn was up and running, Rachel began catering while remodeling the downstairs for the cafe.  In 2016, Sweet Lemon Kitchen opened.  

In 2019, Rachel closed the Inn upstairs. “It was a little bittersweet but necessary,” she says. As Georgetown continued to grow, Rachel knew the space could be better utilized to hold events. Much to her surprise though, a year later, the world faced a global pandemic. Sweet Lemon Kitchen quickly became a popular to-go-only restaurant and pivoted service to outdoor seating.  The Sweet Lemon’s large outdoor seating area was welcomed by Georgetown residents who wanted to go out while maintaining a safe social distance. “What a blessing that was,” says Rachel. The umbrella-covered outdoor tables remain popular to this day. 

2022 brought another big change Sweet Lemon moved from counter service to table-side service, and the reopening of Sweet Lemon’s indoor dining room, with the upstairs used to expand seating for diners during the busiest part of the day. “We now offer tea parties for special events on Saturday afternoons from 3:30 – 5:30 pm,” Rachel explains. 

With the goal of continuing to improve step-by-step depending on the needs of the community, Rachel says, “Stay tuned, there’s more to come!”