Mom and daughter living dream running New Freedom Coffee Roasting Company & Deli
- Through decades working as a nurse, Carol Sieling always wanted to open a restaurant with her daughter, Danielle.
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Carol Sieling stood in front of the old Nardie’s Market in New Freedom, hesitant to launch into another business venture in the middle of a pandemic.
But as the 60-year-old walked through the empty building, ideas began to take root.
She looked at her husband and her daughter and said, “Let’s do it.”
“Worst-case scenario, it doesn’t work,” she remembers telling them. “We lose some money, we get out, we all get another job, and life goes on.”
By the time they left, Carol was scheming up the details of what would become New Freedom Roasting Company & Deli at 10A East Franklin St.
Grinding away
Most of her adult life, through decades working as a nurse, Carol dreamed of opening a restaurant with her daughter, Danielle.
They had their first chance in 2015 when they bought and ran the New Freedom Rail Trail Café. Carol honed the art of coffee roasting while Danielle, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Pittsburgh, oversaw the menu.
In 2017, Danielle received an offer from an exclusive yacht club in Key Largo, Fla., to work at a new restaurant. She jumped on it and headed south while Carol sold the café and went back to nursing.
But Carol couldn’t shake the entrepreneurial itch.
Two weeks before the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020, she quit her nursing job and bought Chow food truck with her husband, Kenny.
Throughout the pandemic, she and Kenny spent weekends serving sandwiches and fresh-roasted coffee from the coffee roaster she kept after selling the café. She also continued to roast coffee and deliver it to clients’ homes and businesses throughout the region.
A new dream takes shape
When Danielle came home, they talked about running their own kitchen again.
After touring the old Nardie’s storefront, Carol and Kenny signed the lease, and Danielle signed on as head chef.
On March 3, 2021, they opened the doors of New Freedom Roasting Company & Deli. They stock the full-service deli, grocery shelves, coolers and freezers with meats, groceries, and dairy from local producers, while Danielle dreams up daily specials like her signature shrimp and grits.
Carol’s coffee bean roaster sits in a side room, where she roasts beans for the shop as well as custom roasts for local businesses like the Jackson House in Railroad.
While Carol’s not sure what’s next, she’s glad she took the leap.
“You know what, you only live once,” she says. “Do what you gotta do. If it’s in your heart, you feel some sort of passion toward it, go for it. And if it fails, you get up and you keep going.”