ANDOVER — The appetite of a teenage boy sent his stepmother into the bakery and restaurant business, derailing her aspirations to get her master’s degree to teach high school English.

That’s the story behind Melissa Smith and her husband, Wally Smith, owners of The Little Red Hen, a full-scale bakery and restaurant at 12 Main St.

The couple grew up in Andover and, after starting a cooking business at home, bought The Little Red Hen from Tina Farrington on Valentine’s Day 2012. Melissa said she began working at The Little Red Hen in September 2011.

Last month, the couple bought the long vacant Andover Guest House bed and breakfast at 28 Main St. and are moving The Little Red Hen there, Melissa Smith said Thursday afternoon.

“We’re very excited,” she said.

She described how they got into the business while raising a large family. They have four children: Cody, who is in college in South Portland majoring in fire science; Cassidy, 16, who does dishes and food preparation at the restaurant; Jewel, 11, and Sarah, 8, both of whom want to do waitressing.

When Melissa and Wally got married, Cody Smith, Melissa’s stepson, was 15 years old. She blames Cody for derailing her teaching career.

“I went to school for high school English, for teaching, but I’ve always cooked,” Melissa Smith said.

She graduated from the University of Maine at Augusta and had been taking master’s-level classes.

“But now I don’t have time to teach,” while running a bakery and restaurant, she said.

“I don’t have interest in doing that any more,” she said. “So I’m definitely not using my degree, but that’s OK. I kind of blame my stepson on the whole thing. When we got married he was 15, and 15-year-old boys eat and eat and eat.”

That eventually got them into the bakery and restaurant business.

“Now Cody’s in college eating ramen noodles and hoping we send him stuff,” Melissa Smith said.

They are renting the Red Hen building and were looking for something a bit bigger with more space when the Andover Guest Home came up at a good price, she said. So they bought it.

“It’s a pretty beautiful historical building, so we’re pretty excited,” she said.

Melissa Smith said she’s been told the three-story B&B was built in the 1920s and was called The Stagecoach Inn at one time. It has seven bedrooms.

But they can’t rent rooms until they work out issues with the Office of the State Fire Marshal, despite being next to the Andover Fire Department and a fire hydrant, she said.

“They want a sprinkler system in here, so we’re negotiating that as we speak,” Melissa Smith said.

Her husband drives trucks for Swasey Excavation of Andover, and is the restaurant’s pastry chef.

“He does most of the pies and the cakes on the weekends,” she said. “He’s extremely talented and he’s really, really good at making cakes and decorating them. I actually probably couldn’t do this at all without him.”

They just finished building a countertop in the new building and are planning to continue catering to long-distance Appalachian Trail hikers.

“We are really hoping to be in here operating by the end of June,” Melissa Smith said.

She said the seating in the bigger building will be a lot better than in the smaller two-story Red Hen building. It will also have an open kitchen where the chef can work in front of customers instead of in a backroom.

“It will be more user friendly,” she said. They are also doing a lot more catering than before, which the new building will better accommodate.

Once they move into the B&B building, The Little Red Hen building will be shut down.

Melissa Smith said they serve breakfast and lunch every day but Monday, and do a prime rib night on Fridays and a pizza buffet night on Saturdays. This summer they will probably offer a pasta night on Thursdays, she said.

“That goes over pretty big with hikers, because the AT crosses about 7 to 8 miles from here, so we get a lot of AT hikers here, which is kind of what led us to try this, as well, because of the rooms upstairs,” Melissa Smith said.

“Right around July 4 is when (hiker traffic) starts and it doesn’t stop until October,” she said. “That’s why we’re really trying to get in here prior to the July 4 weekend.”

Wally Smith said they usually get a dozen hikers in town at any given time during peak season in summer.

“And they’re all hungry, so it worked out really well,” Melissa said. “We’re hoping to offer laundry services for them and shower services, but we can’t rent rooms right now. But if other hostels in town are full, we can rent some space out in our backyard so they can put down a tent.”

They’ve also grown a reputation with The Little Red Hen, attracting five-star ratings from a few online travel businesses.

“We’ve been told people don’t expect to find a nice little place like this in the middle of nowhere,” Melissa Smith said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com