Imagine a place where the smell of freshly baked bread hits your nose and the delicious scents of chocolate, cinnamon and warm icing rush over you as you walk through the door. Can you see it? It’s a sort of bakery heaven — it’s Flour Haven.

A small restaurant on Locust Hill Road in Greer, about seven miles from campus, Flour Haven is a family-owned bakery that serves only the freshest, most delicious breads and pastries as well as breakfast and lunch.

Inside the restaurant are several booths and small two-seater tables. Bread and handmade pottery are for sale, and you can also purchase the special icing the bakers use to frost their cinnamon rolls.

Flour Haven is run by Martha Hill, and her six children and four nieces all work at the bakery, too (as soon as they get out of school for the day).

And this May, Flour Haven will be two years old.

“I’ve been baking all of my life,” Hill said as she stood at the counter icing a cake. The kitchen was busy with workers operating the mixers and ovens. “I grew up in a restaurant. Both my grandma and dad were bakers,” she said. In fact, every item sold at Flour Haven is a family recipe.

Flour Haven opens at 7 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday, but Hill arrives at 4 a.m. All of the bread and pastries are baked fresh every day. “We don’t sell anything that is a day old,” Hill said. “All of our leftovers go to Bible studies, people who are helping the homeless or to anybody who asks, really.”

Flour Haven bakes five different kinds of bread: white, wheat, rye, multi-grain and French. Fresh loaves of bread are sold all day. And so are the pastries. Chocolate chip cookies as big as your hand and cinnamon rolls with an inch and a half of special icing smothered on top are served to you on small, warm, white plates. They also serve sticky buns, doughnuts, muffins, cupcakes and cakes — and just about anything else you might think to order. “I had a guy bring this from Ohio,” Hill said, pointing to a small pastry on her counter. “He asked me to try it and remake it. People do that all the time.”

Or, if you are interested in some homemade pancakes, they offer those too. “People love the pancakes!” Hill said. Flour Haven serves a full service breakfast complete with eggs and bacon.

But, hands down, their best sellers are the cinnamon rolls — which are incredible.

Whether you’re looking for a place to chill with your friends and munch on cupcakes, to read for your Ethics class while eating a muffin, or you just miss homemade pancakes, Flour Haven is the place for you.