A Dream Come True: Lo-Fi Coffee House & Studio is a Gathering Place for Community

Lo-Fi Coffee House & Studio is a lot of things to a lot of people in Elgin. It’s a coffee shop. A bakery. A community hub. A haven for arts and artists. It’s all of those things for owner Ashley Dahlke, too. But most of all Lo-Fi is the living, evolving embodiment of a dream she’s had since she worked her way through college at coffee shops in her native Alaska. 

Dahlke put that dream on hold when she moved to Texas to earn a degree in pastry arts from the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. It waited while she worked as a pastry cook at restaurants around Austin. It even waited when, in 2019, Dahlke and her husband sought out a more rural lifestyle and found it on a seven-acre farm property in McDade. 

The dream started to take shape when Dahlke started selling pastries and sourdough alongside eggs and produce from the farm at local farmers’ markets. Then, in 2023, she made the leap to a full-time operation with Lo-Fi’s original location. 

That first space was part coffee shop, part studio for Dahlke’s ceramics work. She didn’t have her own kitchen in the beginning, but the shop very quickly became a gathering space for artists in the community. Dahlke partnered with those artists to hold regular workshops on topics including hand building ceramics, cyanotype printmaking, jam making, and embroidery. 

“I initially thought the workshop would be a place to make and sell my work, but it just organically became a community space,” Dahlke said. “There’s a large artistic community in Elgin, and they really embraced us right away.”

Rapid growth

That community support helped Lo-Fi expand quickly, and within 18 months the shop had outgrown its original location. Dahlke moved the shop to its current location and in the process traded her workshop space for a kitchen where she currently prepares about 200 fresh pastries every morning, along with custom cake orders. She still hosts workshops, but not as many as she initially did. 

She also works hard. Lo-Fi has grown from a largely solo operation to a team of six, but Dahlke is still in the kitchen around 3:15 a.m. most mornings. She bakes until 10 a.m., then heads back to the farm to tend chickens, geese, goats, pot belly pigs and crops. Her goal is to get to a point where everything she uses in her pastries will be grown on the farm. 

That schedule makes for long days, but Dahlke is used to hard work. It helps that she loves what she does. 

“I love being creative,” she said. “Pastry is always changing. There’s always new things happening. New ingredients. New recipes to try. I get very bored very quickly, so I love the newness that culinary work offers. I love seeing our regulars come in and seeing new people discover us.” 

Community support

Customers aren’t the only ones who have supported Lo-Fi’s growth. The Elgin Economic Development Corporation has helped Dahlke with permitting and with grants that supported her opening and her growth. Those grants helped her pay for a new oven and tables as well as part of an espresso machine when Dahlke needed to upgrade. 

“Businesses like Lo-Fi are one of the best parts of my job,” said Kaley Frye, Director of the Elgin Economic Development Corporation. “Watching a business grow so quickly while delivering high-quality products and fostering a strong sense of community is exactly what we strive to support. Ashley and her team exemplify what it means to think big and follow through. It’s smart, sustainable growth and one of the many success stories that make Elgin a great place to do business.”

Ultimately, that support has helped Dahlke make her dreams come true. 

“This experience has been everything I wanted it to be,” Dahlke said. “Elgin is such a special place, and I’m so happy to be a part of it.”