This is the story of a young pastry chef who left Russia for an unknown baking career in America. Hers is a tale about elevating the classics, like her newly perfected French buttercream that rescues her customers from standard, overly sweet wedding cake frosting. While it sounds high caliber on its own, according to the head baker, it’s actually the customers—the familiar Monday afternoon smiles, and the stunning supply of surrounding farmers’ ingredients that elevate a bakery’s fare from good to great. Which is such a chef thing to say.
Meet Alena Kabetkina, executive chef of the recently rebranded Red Truck Bakery & Café in Warrenton and Marshall. The award-winning (and beloved) bakery has new owners, Neal and Star Wavra, who are ushering in its next era of success by deepening relationships with local farmers, adding espresso, beer, and wine to the menu, boosting a shipping schedule of goodies to anywhere in North America, and leaning into community. The Wavras could see that Kabetkina was the chef who could get them there.
Executive Chef Alena Kabetkina at work glazing a specialty cake at Red Truck Bakery & Café in Marshall.
“Alena’s previous experience in some of the world’s top kitchens was undeniably a selling point,” says Neal about their decision to hire Kabetkina, but it was her heart for community that ultimately sealed the deal.
From Kabetkina’s point of view, joining the Wavra team came down to a feeling. She’d trained under Michelin-star chefs at the intensive School of Italian Culinary Arts, then spent time as a pastry chef in New York. After several years as a bakery sous chef at The Inn at Little Washington, Kabetkina was ready for a very specific pivot.
What Kabetkina deeply wanted was to bring her elevated culinary training into a more face-to-face community experience. She knew quickly in her first meetings with the Wavras that Red Truck Bakery & Café would be a fit. “I felt strongly, very strongly and very positively, that we were—it’s hard to express the feeling—on the same page,” she says. “It felt very right.”
Shelves are packed with delectable delights at the Red Truck Bakery & Café in Marshall.
Kabetkina seems as though she’s ready to help build something great. It’s apparent she knows what she’s come into—a bakery that’s clearly an established, resounding success. When The Red Truck Bakery first opened its doors in 2009, they were doors to a literal old red truck—a 1954 Ford T-150 that Tommy Hilfiger used to own. It was from that truck that then-owner Brian Noyes, whose previous life was in the newspaper and magazine world, used to sell pies and breads he’d baked over the weekend. The business flourished into two brick-and-mortar locations—one in Marshall and one in Warrenton—and national acclaim from the likes of Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey. Noyes published two award-winning cookbooks: The Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook and The Red Truck Bakery Cookbook.
That Noyes’ bakery was a blockbuster is an understatement. What’s hard to imagine is how one could improve on that kind of success—unless you’re talking with Kabetkina.
First, there are the details. A new website makes ordering easy. Layer cake options are being introduced for weddings. Red Truck standards are still front and center: their crazy-delicious granola with a cult-following, plus muffins, boozy cakes, and pies every which way. There’s now a bonafide breakfast and lunch menu. Alcohol is being added for those who swing by to grab a quiche and decide to enjoy it with a nice glass of wine.
A latte and a slice of apple crumb pie at The Red Truck Bakery & Café in Marshall
Part of the new team’s mission is to draw the community in, to sit and stay. That sentiment is close to Kabetkina’s heart and reminiscent of why she started baking in the first place. Her interest was sparked as a child while sitting on a tiny little stool once a week, watching her grandmother bake. “Creating a good memory around food made me drawn to it,” Kabetkina said, revealing her acumen around a particular mood dominating the current cultural café zeitgeist. That mood: hospitality.
It’s the backbone of the “third place” theory, a climate that major chain cafés are clamoring to create, where customers have home, work, and then their café as the third place where they want to spend their time. Red Truck has the baking muscle to pull that off, as well as a penchant for sustained quality. But there’s quality, and then there’s hospitality. The difference? It’s personal. Talk to Kabetkina for even a few minutes, and it’s evident—this is personal to her. She’s pleased when customers stick around after placing an order—“It makes the bakery alive!” she says—or put their wedding cake in her hands. “It says you trust us with your food memories, and that makes me incredibly happy.” She’s serious about getting it right for the community she now calls home.
The Wavras believe Kabetkina is the chef for the bakery’s next era of success; Kabetkina believes it is the whole team that will get them there. “In a recent management meeting, we looked back at how far we’ve come, and it gave me a sense of confidence,” she said. “It’s a confidence in where we are and me personally.” It’s a confidence that the best, for this bakery, is yet to come, and, according to Kabetkina, “We’ve got just the right team to do the job.”
All photos by Scott Suchman. This article originally appeared in the August 2026 issue.
