Most weekday afternoons during the academic year, just before 3 p.m., the same scene unfolds on Montpelier’s School Street. Small groups of students spill out of nearby Union Elementary School and head down the sidewalk in waves, often unaccompanied by adults. They’re headed to the Manghis’ Bread, where they’ll all purchase the same thing: a dinner roll.
The warm rolls are “gentle,” like a hug, 15-year-old Ondina An told Kids VT. “And they’re tradition.”
Priced at 5 cents each, the rolls are also a unique teaching tool for young customers. In a short documentary released last fall on her YouTube channel — which she made in order to highlight her Montpelier community and flex her creative muscles outside of school — An captured this sweet afterschool scene. She highlighted the money skills and independence the longtime family-owned bakery helps foster with each transaction.
“This bakery is one of the first places they learn how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,'” An narrated in “Spotlight Montpelier: Memories With Manghis’.”
The light and fluffy white dinner rolls — made with just flour, water, local eggs, sunflower oil, honey, salt and yeast — are the only thing Manghis’ sells individually. But it sells a lot of them: usually a dozen in the morning before school and from two to seven dozen between 2:50 and 3:30 p.m. If the kids arrive too early, they wait patiently for the rolls to come out of the oven and get what staff call “a 20-step roll,” presented on a paper towel — they have to walk 20 steps before they can eat it to let it cool.
The rolls aren’t a moneymaker, said Maria Manghi Stoufer, who now owns the bakery with her husband, Steve Stoufer. Most of Manghis’ business comes from selling loaves at roughly 35 stores from White River Junction to the Burlington area, many delivered by volunteer drivers.
But the rolls will always cost 5 cents, she said. “We don’t even question it. It feels like the right thing to do for the community and reassuring for parents to know their child has a safe place to stop.”
Manghi Stoufer’s parents, Elaine and Paul Manghi, started their bakery in the late 1970s and moved it to the Victorian house on School Street in 1983. Their early roll customers were families who had attended story hour at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library.
Primarily a wholesale bakery, Manghis’ didn’t — and still doesn’t — have a typical retail space. To occupy toddlers while their parents bought bread through the doorway of the production space, Elaine handed out rolls for free.
That tradition soon spread to elementary school students. When Manghi Stoufer started working with her parents, around 2000, the family realized they were giving away more than three dozen rolls every day. It was sometimes hard to explain to kids that even though the rolls were free, there was a limit of one per customer. So the bakery instituted its still-unchanged pricing structure: 5 cents for the first roll and full price — now 50 cents, an easy figure for kids to remember — for two.
“They’re figuring out money and learning what the coins are from an early age.” Maria Manghi Stoufer
Their young customers occasionally try to game the system, Manghi Stoufer said. Some say they’re buying a roll for a friend, or they come back later wearing a hat or other nifty disguise. But overall, the kids are respectful. Some come in with their own coin purses or dump out their piggy banks on the counter.
“They’re figuring out money and learning what the coins are from an early age,” Manghi Stoufer said. “It’s really sweet, and I don’t think it’s something they get in school the way it used to be taught.”
Manghis’ employees will help sort coins, reminding kids that the nickel is 5 cents and the dime is 10, even though it’s smaller. The staff takes time to help kids trying to figure out if they have enough to buy a small loaf of bread or a whole bag of rolls.
As the children get older, they get more comfortable with the whole process. Some stand in the hallway as a group, pooling their money on a tiny table to see if they can afford a tray of cinnamon buns. If they’re successful, they’ll split the spoils on the stairway, the front stoop or outside the library.
Even when parents accompany their kids to the bakery, many wait outside at their child’s request.
“They’ve been instructed to stay on the walkway because the child can do it themselves. Don’t even open the door,” Manghi Stoufer said with a chuckle.
The bakery also maintains “a trusty plastic box” full of index cards, alphabetized by customer name. Parents — especially those whose children wait for pickup at the library — stop in and add $1 or $10 to the card so their kids can shop at the bakery on their own without needing cash, Manghi Stoufer said.
An, the filmmaker, remembers hearing about Manghis’ rolls from her older sister, who had a card. When An became a student at Union Elementary, her mom brought her in to set up one of her own.
“It was really exciting to get a card and to stop in for a roll with my friends,” An said. “It felt like an adult milestone.”
Now a first-year at Montpelier High School, An no longer heads to Manghis’ as part of her daily routine. But she’ll sometimes pop in for cinnamon rolls, and her family always has a loaf of the bakery’s original high-protein bread in the freezer.
Memories of those childhood moments — prompted by a story about the rolls last spring in the Montpelier Bridge — inspired An to make the two-minute, 25-second documentary. She’s made videos for school projects in the past, she said, but this is the first one she’s directed, produced, shot, scripted and edited entirely herself. It’s also the first in a series she’s calling “Spotlight Montpelier.” Her next project, about Meadow Mart, another local business, will be slightly longer and will include interviews.
“It’s important to showcase your community,” the young filmmaker said, and Manghis’ was an obvious place to start.
“Everyone knows Manghis’, even if you don’t go there.”
Kids and Dough
Looking for ways to teach your kids about money? The Vermont State Treasurer’s office has compiled some suggestions at MyMoney.Vermont.gov:
Tips for toddlers: Teach them to save money by picking a savings goal they can meet quickly, such as a box of crayons. To make the savings goal seem real, tape a picture of the crayons to a savings jar and give your child a few coins each day to reach the goal.
Ideas for elementary school-age children: Start giving a weekly allowance. Consider paying a base rate and upping it for big chores. Let them decide how to spend it, within reason, and know that blowing it all on the first day is typical. Don’t bail them out if they make bad choices. Instead, discuss how the allowance might be spent the next week.
Use your errands and chores as an opportunity for learning: Take your kids to your bank or credit union to deposit money. Show them how you use the ATM to take it out. Explain that, when you use a credit card, you’re essentially borrowing money that you have to pay back. When you pay bills, show the statement to your child and say something like, “Remember the T-shirt we bought for $10? Here it is on the list of things I have to pay for now.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “On a Roll | The Manghis’ Bread in Montpelier teaches kids to be customers, 5 cents at a time”
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This article appears in Kids VT, Spring 2025.
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