Award-winning Tupelo dessert café Crave is officially open for business in its new Oxford location.

Crave has become somewhat of a mainstay in the downtown Tupelo scene, but owner Tiffany Franks said the decision to open an Oxford location was a no-brainer.

“We love Oxford. My husband graduated from Ole Miss, and Oxford’s just always been a cool place that we come for date nights that’s out of town, but not too far,” Franks said. “We’ve had several kids that came to us in Tupelo while they were in high school, and then they come over here. It just seemed like it was a logical choice.”

The new storefront is located on College Hill Road, next door to Lost Pizza.

The store will be open from 6:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, 6:30 a.m. until midnight on Friday, 7 a.m. to midnight on Saturday and on Sunday, from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m.

Early Sunday hours are different from Crave’s flagship store in Tupelo, but Franks said it matches the bakery’s desire to expand in the Oxford market.

Over the past week, the Crave team has hosted two-hour pop-up openings in preparation for the bakery’s official grand opening next Monday, June 11. The response she’s seen from the community makes her optimistic, Franks said.

“We’ve seen so many people. It makes me nervous about actually opening for good, because we’ve seen lots and lots of people,” she said. “So far the community has been really, really good to us.”

One reason for the initial success of the new location, she said, is the number of customers who spent their high school years going to Crave in Tupelo and then came to Ole Miss.

Another reason is Crave’s signature dish: the Deluxe Skillet Cookie. Served warm in a cast-iron skillet and topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup, the skillet cookie is the most popular item on the menu.

“We sell about 12,000 skillet cookies a year,” Franks said. “And we actually got signature red skillets exclusively for this location.”

Above all else, Franks said Crave prides itself on its commitment to the community. Without a strong customer base, she said, the company wouldn’t have nearly the amount of success it’s had.

Dedication to the community is something Franks said she hopes will continue in Oxford.

“We’re hoping to see a community of people that love us and that we can love back,” she said. “We love being a part of the community. We love that in Tupelo, and we really hope to let people know we want to be a part of the community here, too.”