“It’s just how it is; we feel best when we’re active and moving,” Julita Baravykienė says. Her movement practices, yoga, and acro-yoga classes have energized people for years, while the Pranciškus Mill, taken over from her grandfather, and its direct continuation Bundu Cafe continue to awaken the residents and visitors of Kaunas in the morning.
If you haven’t wondered how she manages to do everything, you should know that Julita is also a new mom of twins: Leonardas and Sofija. We sat down with her to talk about the cafe and the turning millstones of Pranciškus Mill, about the strengthening of Kaunas residents’ kneecaps and her own life paths.
In addition to doing a headstand, Julita’s hands are also responsible for E. Ožeškienės Street and Aleksotas district residents’ watering at the mouth over the baked goods of Bundu and Pranciškus Mill since 2022. Legendary buckwheat cookies, cinnamon rolls, cakes, vegan and gluten-free treats are created daily from freshly made flour.
Julita and I meet in Bundu – a hundred square meters filled with sweet smells, green plants, and coziness.
During this period, the café has managed to bring together not only a team with a lot of creative freedom, which today almost independently takes care Bundu daily, but also a broader community, which is involved in a plethora of events, from the Halloween party during fall to the dance event that celebrates spring.
Just like before one of Julita’s yoga classes, we take off our shoes, bend our knees, and sit on the ground for a conversation.
We start with Aleksotas and her grandfather Pranciškus, who in 1996 set up a mill in his house and soon became a celebrity in the district. The initial desire to give people the opportunity to grind their own grain quickly grew into a flour and health food shop with queues.
Pranciškus usually worked alone, but he always found time to tell each customer about his products, healthy nutrition, and the benefits of whole grain flour. Now it is done by Julita’s mother, who is also not lacking in eloquence.
Having grown up and lived in such an environment, Julita says that her life was filled with flour and pastries, but she did not plan to connect her future with it. “Despite completing my studies in food science and technology and experimenting with pastries since my teenage years, I always thought my path would lead elsewhere,” the co-founder of Bundu says.
This is partly what happened – Julita, who has been practicing yoga since the age of eight, chose the direction of movement. “Although I had lost interest in yoga and turned to other sports at one point, I was finally brought back to this path.” After the first year of university, she went to her relatives living in the USA for the summer where she completed the yoga teacher’s course. When Julita returned to Lithuania, she started teaching yoga classes. The food sphere became less and less of an interest, and movement and yoga eventually seeped into her blood and became her daily bread.
However, Julita couldn’t stay away from bread for long. When the pandemic hit, the yoga classes stopped, and when the cousin who played an important role in the mill left, she decided to help her grandfather, who hadn’t worked there much.
“After graduating in 2017, it took me another three years to get back on this path as well. This happens often in my life. Even when I try to go in another direction, I always return to basics,” the café’s co-founder thinks about her vocation.
Julita fully committed to the mill in early 2021: she established a small company, created an online store, and set up social media accounts, since previously, news about it spread only by word of mouth. “At that time, I had already started baking sourdough bread and since there weren’t many places to buy it in Kaunas, it quickly sold out to acquaintances. Soon, the number of buyers and interested people began to grow.”
In the spring, Julita’s husband Tomas became more involved in the mill’s activities, and things started to progress even faster – the assortment expanded with cookies and granola, and other baked goods were developed in collaboration with a café in Kaunas. “It’s funny to think that back then we had a pretty unprofessional website, yet people found us despite that, and it seems like we weren’t doing anything special.”
As Pranciškus Mill started to operate at its full capacity and the number of customer cafes expanded, it was decided to set up a bakery in the mill in the fall of the same year.
“I remember we walked around the house and wondered like some developers whether it could fit here or there. In February 2022, we re-opened not only with the bakery but also with a renovated shop. Soon we started to grow the team, and some people wanted to get involved in the project even more. All that was missing was someone asking a question, “What about a cafe in the city center?” The answer was clear, “A cafe in the city center.” We signed a lease in June, and in September we opened the blue doors of Bundu,” Julita remembers.
Bundu is coming
“We are opening to learn,” Bundu announced almost two years ago about the opening of the cafe on September 1. This is confirmed by Julita, who says that the beginning was intended for testing.
“We didn’t want to do everything perfectly from the first moment. We tested a lot, looked for inspiration, and thought about what we wanted to be. We still return to this question as a team: why and how do we do everything? Maybe that’s why everything turned out so well, even if there was a lot of chaos in the beginning. After all, we did everything with the team from scratch, not having enough knowledge in some areas, for example, what kind of mixer is needed for the kitchen,” Julita laughs.
The philosophy of Pranciškus Mill and Bundu is reflected in the motto, “From grain to pastry”, which the owners have been following since the beginning of the business.
“Our motto primarily means the desire to bake tasty and high-quality food, and if the products are also vegan or gluten-free, that’s just a plus. We have always tried to offer healthier products. Perhaps this is a kind of legacy of my grandfather. Of course, we are also looking for innovations, but stability and proven recipes are also important to us. Sometimes I wonder how people still haven’t gotten tired of the same buckwheat cookies and cinnamon buns,” Julita smiles.
She notes that since day one Bundu has been very successful in gathering a reliable and extremely creative team.
“Even what our space looks like and what’s happening at Bundu today is a credit to our team. Someone loves plants and has turned the café into a jungle, someone decided to create drawings for the counter. We strive very hard to ensure that everyone here can realize themselves: we give our colleagues the freedom to organize, do things, and DJ. It’s also nice that we even have a list of people who would like to work for us,” café’s co-founder says.
Although at the beginning Julita and her husband were fully involved in the work at the bakery and the cafe, they soon realized that it was time to slowly let go of the project.
“We pulled back a little more in the spring of 2023. Everything was working smoothly, so we decided to free the team’s hands for creativity and kept the more boring jobs for ourselves. If necessary, we were able to withdraw for a while and focus on the children – now we are coming back little by little, taking the burden off of our colleagues’ shoulders,” the yoga instructor says.
Julita says that they couldn’t stay still for long, even after the twins were born a few months ago. “Over the past year, our ability to juggle different activities has improved, so we do everything together with the kids – we even go to the forest, and when they fall asleep, we sit down to work. Of course, the family helps, so going out for two hours to lead a yoga class is no problem. It’s really nice to adapt to the new role and not fall out of life, and we even received praise from the twins’ physiotherapist for their active lifestyle,” Julita smiles.
“I am glad that my life path contains different spheres. If I get tired from one, I can turn to another. Then it seems that you are always busy with something, but you don’t feel tired. It’s a fact that we feel our best when we move and are active.
The most important thing is not to frame yourself
Today, Julita is more focused on yoga and acro yoga, movement practices, and teaching it. What is movement practice?
“This is a broader concept that encompasses a person’s movement capabilities. I like the term ‘physical literacy’, which refers to a person’s physical competencies, knowledge, and variety of movement skills. It’s different from a gym where everyone can understand how to do an exercise, and then increase the number of repetitions or weights. When you come to movement practices, you might fail three times in a row just in terms of coordination. And you have to accept that you are failing. But the best learning happens when things don’t work out, and you are forced to learn something new,” Julita says.
What will the future look like for Julita, Pranciškus Mill, and Bundu? One thing is certain: all three will remain authentic and open to new possibilities.
“For now, what we have is enough for us. If we were to expand, we would become like everyone else, and being unique, creative, and doing less but with better quality is our foundation. Of course, we have room for improvement. We dream of educational activities taking place in the cafe, for example, baking bread or others. However, the future for me and Tomas is completely unknown – maybe some new path will appear. The most important thing is not to box yourself in, because life can always lead you down a path you never would have imagined.”
