The Adorable Reason Joanna Gaines Chose This Building For Her Baking Company

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those for whom the word "magnolia" conjures up the image of a beautiful white flower, and the other 98% for whom the word conjures up Chip and Joanna Gaines. As the official name of the Gaines family's umbrella of businesses, "magnolia" serves as the couple's sprawling network of television shows as well as their digital address (magnolia.com). It's also scrawled across their magazine (The Magnolia Journal) and Joanna's cookbooks ("Magnolia Table," volumes one and two). 

And, presumably, the word can be found in big, bold, farmhouse-chic lettering on any map of Waco, Texas, to designate where Chip and Joanna's Magnolia Market is located, aka the site of the couple's shopping district alongside a food truck hotspot, coffeeshop, and bakery. While the family's Silos Baking Co. doesn't have the word "magnolia" anywhere in its name, there is a hidden flower or two in the bakery's history.

With cupcakes named "shiplap" and "nuts and bolts," the pastries offered at Silos Baking Co. clearly pay homage to the couple's "Fixer-Upper" days. But another, older part of the Gaines' origin story is also omnipresent in the bakery — in fact, it's baked right into the brick and mortar of the building. "I've always loved this building that was once a flower shop where Chip would buy me flowers when we were dating," Joanna Gaines Tweeted recently, honoring the bakery's five-year anniversary. She added, "It caught my eye several years ago & that led us to buying the Silos! I can't believe it's been 5 years of serving up cupcakes & cookies — Happy Birthday #SilosBakingCo!"

Silos Baking Co. got creative last year, when the pandemic forced many restaurants to close their doors. According to Country Living, the bakery made Joanna Gaines' famous cookies available for online ordering, and encouraged customers to get them delivered for themselves or as a nice gesture for a friend. Now that Magnolia Marketplace and Silos Baking Co. have reopened (the website encourages, but does not require, masks), fans of the Gaines' brand in all its iterations can enjoy ordering baked goods in person agaIn, perhaps while perusing the property for a trinket or two. The marketplace sells everything from clothes and gardening essentials to home décor and kitchenware. Like Target, but fancier.

There must have been some magic in the flower-shop-turned-flour-shop, though. As Joanna Gaines points out in the couple's memoir (called, what else, "The Magnolia Story,"), Chip wasn't the best romancer on the scene, as noted by Business Insider. Showing up an hour-and-a-half late to their first date and waiting over a month to call Joanna in order to win a bet with a friend, apparently Chip's moves in the early days of the couple's relationship were rougher than the rustic aesthetic that has made the pair famous. 

The flowers must have been really nice though, because the Gaines' love story has happy ending, with Chip and Joanna making their dreams of building a family, building houses, and building a community into a beautiful reality.