A new face has arrived on Main Street.

Yummy’s Cupcake Emporium, 300 Main St., opened in July.

Owner Tawnya Zerr said she wanted the shop open by then, so people coming to Main Street for the parade and other festivities would have a chance to check out her new place.

“I want people to know when they come here they’ll get something good,” she said.

Zerr has no previous professional baking experience. She started out at DMACC, concentrating on art and fashion, and ended up with a degree in welding.

“I liked old bikes, and I had an old car,” she said. “I was never really planning anything with what I was doing in school.”

Before deciding to open Yummy’s Cupcake Emporium, Zerr worked at a restaurant and a vintage clothing store. She had been saving up for eight years to open a vintage clothing store of her own, but then the idea for a bakery came along. For the past six months, she has been focused on her relatively new dream.

“I really wanted a cupcake one day,” Zerr said. “I thought it would be awesome to get a good fresh-baked cupcake, but I couldn’t think of any place to get one. I decided I had to bring the cupcakes to Ames.”

Zerr chose to open her restaurant not only because there are not many places like it in the area, but also because she grew up in and around Story County.

“I love Ames,” she said. “It’s a small town, but it still feels like a city.”

She said Yummy’s Cupcake Emporium reflects who she is.

“I love to eat, and I love vintage things,” Zerr said. The cafe has a 1950s diner style.

Despite the name, Zerr’s cafe serves more than cupcakes. It also offers fruit, vegetables, soup, salad and pizza from a Jeff’s Pizza, 2402 Lincoln Way, as part of an agreement between the two businesses.

“Their pizza will reach Main Street, and my products will reach Campustown,” Zerr said.

Since cupcakes are the focus of Yummy’s Cupcake Emporium, she said she will offer six different cupcakes every day. The types of cupcakes available will rotate weekly.

That way, she said, people will have to keep coming back for more treats.

Zerr gets ideas for her unusual-flavored cupcakes from what she’s been craving, and she asks people what they have in mind.

“Our peanut butter and jelly is really popular,” she said.

She has recently developed a green tea-flavored cupcake with lemon honey frosting, as well as blackberry. Currently, she is working on a beer-flavored treat.

“We will have flavors you haven’t thought of because we haven’t thought of them yet.”

Zerr’s husband came up with the name for the restaurant.

“He shot down all of my ideas, so I let him pick a name,” she said. “It kind of works because, so far, everyone who’s tried the cupcakes say ‘Mmm, yummy.'”