Not long ago, four generations of one family gathered around a table at Skillets Café & Grill for a meal. The women represented different seasons of life, yet all four shared a connection to owner Amie Baima’s culinary journey. Over the years, they had known her through Coligny Bakery, Just Pasta, or Skillets – perhaps all three.
For Baima, the moment captured something larger than a loyal customer base. It represented more than 30 years of birthdays, vacations, Sunday breakfasts, hurried lunches, leisurely dinners, and children growing up over plates of Mickey Mouse pancakes.
Some of those children now return with children of their own.
“That was really something,” Baima said. “There were four generations sitting at the table, and all of them had been with me either at the bakery, Just Pasta, or Skillets.”
Restaurants are often measured by the meals they serve, but the true measure of Skillets might be the memories its customers carry away – and bring back with them year after year.
Since opening in Coligny Plaza in 1993, Skillets has evolved from a tiny breakfast-and-lunch spot into a full-service restaurant serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It has survived a devastating fire, changing regulations, hurricanes, a pandemic, labor shortages, shifting customer expectations, and the everyday pressures of the food and beverage industry.
Through it all, Baima and her family have remained present. Not just involved. Present.
“I think the reason we have made it is because I’m there every day,” Baima said. “Somebody from the family is always there.”
That constancy has helped transform Skillets from a restaurant into a Hilton Head Island institution – a place visitors seek out as part of their vacations and residents return to because it feels familiar, welcoming and unmistakably local.
The Birthday Present
Skillets was not Baima’s first business. In fact, its creation was prompted by the success of another venture and by customers who knew what they wanted before she realized she was prepared to offer it.
After growing up on Hilton Head Island, Baima left to study food science at Winthrop University and culinary arts at Johnson & Wales. She eventually returned home and, in 1992, opened Coligny Bakery. She deliberately chose her birthday as opening day.
“That was my birthday present to myself,” she said. “I opened my business on my birthday, and I thought, ‘At the end of the day, all that money is mine.’”
She laughs now at the optimism of a young entrepreneur who had yet to fully appreciate the difference between revenue and profit. Still, opening a business in her early 20s was no small accomplishment. Baima had education, energy, ambition, and an appetite for work that would soon have her moving between multiple enterprises from before sunrise until late at night.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is it. This is what I’m going to do,’” she said.
Amie Baima and her son, Evan Berkner.
Customers quickly embraced the bakery’s pastries, but after returning for several mornings, many began asking Baima for something more. She listened.
“By the third day, people would say, ‘We really like the pastries, but we want something a little more substantial,’” Baima said. “I kept sending people other places, and finally I thought, ‘Ding, ding, ding. We need to open a breakfast restaurant.’”
The opportunity was clear, but Baima was already stretched thin. In addition to the bakery, she had opened Just Pasta. Her days sometimes began at 4 a.m. and ended close to midnight. A third restaurant could not succeed without someone she trusted completely.
She turned to her father, John Baima, who was working in real estate.
“I said, ‘Dad, let’s do this together. Will you come work with me?’” she recalled. “He didn’t even hesitate. He said ‘yes.’”
She wondered how quickly he would be willing to leave his real estate business. The answer came soon enough: quickly.
“He sold it,” Baima said. “And Skillets was born.”
A Family Takes Its Place
The first Skillets occupied only about one-third of the building it now fills. Other restaurants operated in the remaining space, coming and going while Skillets steadily built its following.
The restaurant initially served breakfast and lunch. Baima tried dinner for approximately a year, but with several other businesses demanding her attention, the workload was unsustainable.
“I thought, ‘This is too much for me. I’m done,’” she said.
The irony, of course, is that Baima was far from done. She was only beginning to understand how deeply her businesses and family life would become intertwined.
Her mother, Darlene, worked alongside her father at Skillets and also helped with Corner Market Deli and Catering, another Baima enterprise located near Piggly Wiggly in Coligny Plaza. The back portion of what is now Stu’s Surf Side Subs also became home to Baima’s catering operation.
At the same time, she operated Hilton Head Wedding Cakes.
Her son, Evan, spent many Saturdays accompanying her as she delivered cakes to hotels, clubhouses, and event venues across Hilton Head and Bluffton. While other children were playing, Evan was often riding in the car beside a towering wedding cake, then slipping behind the scenes into another commercial kitchen.
“There probably aren’t many hotels or banquet places on this island or in Bluffton where he hasn’t been in the kitchen,” Baima said.
Evan also spent time in the Skillets kitchen with his grandfather, John. Baima remembers her father positioning a ladder, crate, or cooler so his young grandson could reach the cooking surface and help flip pancakes or French toast.
Long before he assumed an important role in the restaurant, Evan was absorbing its rhythms, personalities, and unwritten rules. Skillets was never merely the place where his family worked. It was part of the environment in which he was raised. Today, Evan is at the restaurant daily, helping lead the kitchen and bringing a new generation’s perspective to the operation.
Baima’s sister, Sandy, who owns another Hilton Head mainstay – Mingles Gift Shop – remains part of the Skillets routine as well, coming in almost every day to share lunch with her. She has also accepted an unofficial quality-control assignment involving the restaurant’s iced tea.
“We call her the Tea Nazi,” Baima said with a laugh. “She always tastes the iced tea, and if it’s even slightly not fresh, she throws it away and makes new. The employees practically wait for her to come in and make the tea.”
It is one small example of how naturally the boundaries between business and family disappear at Skillets.
“It is definitely a family affair,” Baima said.
Amie and her son Evan were on the first CH2 cover, TWENTY YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, in September of 2006. As you can see – some things have changed and some things have stayed the same!
Rising From the Ashes
The family’s commitment would be tested when a fire began in an adjoining restaurant and destroyed the shared building. Skillets had to close, and the process of resolving insurance matters, navigating changing federal requirements, redesigning plans, and rebuilding stretched beyond two years.
During the closure, two Just Pasta employees approached Baima about buying the business. She viewed the proposal as a way to keep it within the extended work family while preserving resources for the day Skillets might reopen. She agreed.
Later, the new owners decided the bakery would help restore the feel the businesses had shared when Baima operated them, and they offered to purchase it as well. Baima did not require much persuasion.
“I thought, ‘No more 4 a.m. Don’t twist me too hard,’” she said.
For a time, she considered relocating Skillets, but the right location never emerged. In retrospect, she is grateful it did not. Skillets belonged in Coligny, where it had established its identity and relationship with the community. Still, Baima knew that reopening would require a fundamental change. She no longer wanted her livelihood to be vulnerable to decisions made in another restaurant occupying the same building.
“I decided that if we were going to do it, I wanted the whole building,” she said. “If I was going to be at a loss of income for that long again, it needed to be my mistake, not somebody else’s.”
When Skillets finally returned, it returned larger and stronger. Baima consolidated her focus into one operation. With the expense of the expanded space, breakfast and lunch alone were no longer enough, so dinner became an essential part of the business. The setback that could have ended Skillets instead gave Baima the opportunity to rebuild it with greater control, broader capabilities, and renewed purpose.
The fire was not the last crisis Skillets would face. Hurricanes disrupted life and business on Hilton Head. COVID-19 brought unprecedented challenges to the restaurant industry. Staffing became increasingly difficult. Costs rose. Customer habits changed.
Yet the restaurant continued. Staying power, Baima’s story suggests, rarely comes from avoiding hardship. It comes from adapting without surrendering the values that made a business worth saving.
Dinner, Dancing, and Elvis
As the newly expanded Skillets found its footing, Baima embraced the opportunity to create an energetic evening atmosphere. At the time, fewer Coligny restaurants offered live entertainment, particularly outdoors. Skillets became one of the early spots where diners could enjoy music on the patio. Among its most memorable performers was an Elvis impersonator whose appearances became wildly popular.
“It was a riot because we would have hundreds of people there,” Baima said. “The police would have to come and monitor the parking lot because there were so many people watching Elvis.”
The evenings reflected a different era in Coligny, one Baima remembers fondly. As more restaurants began offering bands and entertainment, the area’s nightlife grew louder and more competitive. Eventually, Baima found a practical solution just across the parking lot.
“Now, with all the bands Fish has, I don’t need to pay for entertainment,” she said. “I can just listen to what they have.”
The comment reflects Baima’s instinctive blend of humor and pragmatism – qualities that have served her well through three decades in an unpredictable industry.
The Family – and the Family Beyond
Each generation of the Baima family has brought something distinct to Skillets. Baima learned much of her approach to business from her parents, whose old-school perspective sometimes differed from her own. When she was younger, she did not always recognize the value of those differences.
Over time, her appreciation deepened. Today, she watches the same generational dynamic unfold between herself and Evan.
“I’ll try to say something, and he’ll say, ‘But there is such a better way to do it now, Mom. Technology,’” Baima said. “We call him the IT department.”
Baima still prefers writing checks. Her bookkeeper encourages her to consolidate expenses on a credit card. Evan sees technological solutions where his mother sees systems that have worked perfectly well for years.
The exchanges are lighthearted, but they demonstrate one of the most important challenges facing a legacy business: preserving the practices that created stability while remaining open to the tools and ideas that will carry it forward.
Her father supplied discipline, financial guidance, and unwavering support. Baima brought culinary training, entrepreneurial instinct, and the willingness to take risks. Evan contributes operational experience informed by a lifetime in the restaurant and an understanding of contemporary technology.
Their approaches sometimes conflict, but the shared objective remains the same. The restaurant must continue to evolve without ceasing to feel like Skillets.
The Baima family may be the constant presence at Skillets, but its definition of family extends well beyond bloodlines. Baima has employed people whose parents, cousins, siblings, spouses, and partners have also worked for her. Some employees began as teenagers and remained connected to the business through multiple stages of adulthood.
She remembers one woman who began working for her at the bakery when she was 14. The young employee’s mother and father also worked for Baima, as did a cousin and, eventually, her boyfriend. Although the woman later started a business of her own, other members of the extended family remain part of the Skillets team.
Stories like that are common enough that the restaurant’s history can be traced not only through the Baima family tree but through the families of its employees.
Why have so many stayed? Baima believes the answer returns to the same principle that has sustained Skillets: Family presence. And family, in Baima’s world, is not a sentimental label. It means arguing, forgiving, correcting, helping, returning and showing up again the next day.
Changing Tastes, Constant Expectations
Longevity requires more than surviving dramatic events. It also demands navigating the gradual changes that transform an industry over time.
Baima has watched customer expectations evolve significantly since 1993. Diners are more informed and often more particular. Online reviews can amplify a single disappointing experience. Modifications, substitutions, and dietary requirements have become part of daily service.
Skillets has responded by expanding its options while retaining its home-style identity. Its menus now span breakfast, lunch, and dinner and include Southern favorites, seafood, children’s selections, and extensive gluten-free choices. The restaurant also offers indoor and outdoor dining, pet-friendly porches, and even a dog menu.
Evan credits Skillets’ longevity, at least in part, to its location in what he considers Hilton Head’s downtown. Location has certainly mattered. Coligny is a gathering place where the beach, shops, restaurants, celebrations, and vacation traditions converge. For many visitors, it is one of the first places they explore after arriving on the island.
Skillets has contributed as much to Coligny’s identity as Coligny has contributed to the restaurant’s success. The plaza remains home to many locally owned shops and restaurants rather than being dominated by national chains. That individuality gives the area its personality and allows businesses like Skillets to become landmarks in their own right. Skillets’ location may bring people through the door, but its consistency brings them back.
A Good Ride
After more than 33 years, Baima can look across the restaurant and see her life reflected back to her.
She sees her father, who believed in her idea immediately and left his own career to help her build it. She sees her mother working beside him. She sees Evan as a child, standing on a crate near the griddle, and as a man, helping guide the restaurant into its next chapter. She sees her sister evaluating the iced tea.
She sees employees who arrived as teenagers and became trusted adults, as well as the parents, siblings, cousins, and partners who joined them.
She sees visitors who planned a Skillets breakfast before they ever crossed the bridge onto Hilton Head. She sees island residents stopping in after church, children eating Mickey Mouse pancakes, and grandparents ordering longtime favorites. She sees dogs settled beneath patio tables and families reconnecting over food they did not have to cook themselves.
Most of all, she sees people returning.
“It has been a good ride,” Baima said. “It has been trying, but it has been fun.”
The distinction matters. Skillets did not last because the ride was always easy. It lasted because the Baima family remained willing to take it – through exhausting mornings, late nights, business expansions, painful losses, rebuilding plans, changing expectations, and countless meals served one plate at a time.
A restaurant can offer good food and enjoy a successful season. To last for generations requires something more. It requires people to trust that the doors will open again tomorrow, employees who know they matter, and owners who remain close enough to recognize familiar faces and attentive enough to welcome new ones. It requires the wisdom to preserve beloved traditions, the humility to adopt better methods, and the resilience to begin again when circumstances reduce everything to ashes.
At Skillets, staying power has never been an abstract business strategy. It looks like Amie arriving each day. It looks like Evan in the kitchen. It looks like her father stopping by and her sister checking the tea. And it looks like four generations of one family seated together at a table, sharing a meal in a restaurant that has become part of their story.
There will always be another breakfast to prepare, another customer to please and another challenge waiting beyond the kitchen doors. But after more than three decades, Baima knows exactly what has carried Skillets this far.
Family shows up. And at Skillets Café & Grill, there is always a place for family at the table.