All that are left are...

Monday was a sad day on Norris Avenue.

On Sunday evening, ownership of what had long been McCook’s best-known eatery and gathering place announced it was closing its doors effective immediately. In a social media post, the owners wrote, “With deep sadness, we’re here to share that Saturday was Embers Bakery’s final day.”

For generations, the bakery had been more than a business. Under its earlier name, Sehnert’s Dutch Oven Bakery and Bieroc Café, it was Norris Avenue’s anchor tenant and civic nerve center. Founded by the Sehnert family in 1957 and tracing its baking lineage back to 1521 in Erfurt, Germany, the bakery reflected the proud immigrant craftsmanship that helped shape small-town commerce across the Midwest.

Sehnert’s was a place where people didn’t just stop in for doughnuts or bierocs; they gathered. Mornings were punctuated by coffee klatches and coaches’ clubs. Musicians played there. Candidates faced voters there. Civic groups held meetings there. Buffalo Commons First Tuesday gatherings unfolded in its cozy interior. More than any other business in recent memory, Sehnert’s helped give downtown McCook its sense of community.

The world took notice too. In 2019, the bakery received the prestigious James Beard Foundation America’s Classics Award – the first Nebraska business ever to do so – cementing its reputation as a genuine rural culinary institution. It became a regular stop on the Nebraska Passport program. Long before that, a simple Google search of McCook would almost always lead back to the bakery.

When Andrew and Alix Ambriz purchased the business from Matt and Shelly Sehnert in August of 2021, the news was greeted with optimism. In rural America, even the most successful businesses often close when owners retire simply because there’s no one willing or able to take them on. Consequently, communities are left with diminished service, fewer options as consumers and vacant storefronts in what should be prime retail districts. For a moment, it seemed Sehnert’s would defy that pattern—offering a rare example of continuity instead of another empty building and a lost piece of community life.

The 2023 decision to rebrand the business as Embers Bakery and Café, however, puzzled many. In shedding the Sehnert name, the owners gave up not only a regional following but a national reputation – something most rural communities would give anything to have. A drive-through location followed in May of this year, but just months later, the downtown bakery is shuttered. Unsubstantiated rumors say that the newer location in Kearney will remain open, or reopen, and that the original recipes will follow.

What remains here, for now, is an empty storefront unlike any other. Sehnert’s and Norris Avenue were intertwined for nearly seventy years. Their story is the story of McCook itself – rooted in the history of the west, built on hard work, sustained by community.

In the short term, other restaurants downtown may benefit from the displaced lunch crowd and catering demand, but no other space can replicate what Sehnert’s represented. A city loses something intangible when a place like this closes – not just a business, but a gathering place, a bit of its shared soul.

In time, memories of the bakery may fade, but its legacy won’t. No history of McCook will be complete without mention of the Sehnert family, their food, and the institution they built.

For now, the ovens have gone cold and all that’s left are...embers.