NASHUA – On Saturday, Crosby Bakery hosted its grand reopening under new owners Ryan Morse and Jennifer Stone-Grimaldi, celebrating the icons history, as well as recent renovations, including new gray wood floors, trendy chalkboards listing menu items in colorful curvy print and touch screen tablets that now allow for credit and debit card transactions.

Inside Crosby’s, a dense crowd of customers ordered their favorite sweets over the counter, while kids pressed their faces against the glass to take in the mouth-watering display of decadent cakes, frosted cookies, donuts, raspberry squares and both fruit and meat pies. Containers of baked beans lined the top of the display case, one of their more traditional menu items hailed by regulars as a Crosby Bakery staple. Outside, both adults and children sampled a selection of free desserts and licked frosting off their fingers as they devoured their purchased sweets next to floating bouquets of rainbow balloons.

For more than 70 years, Crosby Bakery has been a mainstay of the Nashua community, thriving under the helm of the Crosbys, the Cummings and now Morse and Stone-Grimaldi, who are different generations but all members of the same family.

“We won’t be changing things too much, but we wanted to modernize it a bit to give more people access,” Stone-Grimaldi said.

She, along with co-owner Morse, are following in the footsteps of Mike and Gale Cummings, revamping the style and accessibility of the bakery while keeping true to the previous owners’ vision of offering traditional New England fare.

“The transition has been great,” said former longtime owner Mike Cummings. “As you get older in life, it becomes hard to change, but it was time; time for a new regime. I think the kids are doing a great job.”

Though the front of the bakery has transformed under the modernizing eye of new owners, the core of the business remains connected to the traditional recipes most familiar to those who have been patrons of the business since the very beginning.

The recipes have been passed down from Mike’s father-in-law, Jacob Crosby, who started the business in 1947 and learned many of the recipes from his own father, who ran his own bakery, Hathaway’s, during the Great Depression. Since then, the next generation of family members and bakery owners have strived to maintain the essence of an Old New England bakery by continuing to create and sell traditional New England favorites, including meat pies, date-filled cookies and New England baked beans.

“We are very appreciative that Ryan and Jennifer are continuing the business,” said former owner Gale Crosby-Cummings. “As the next generation, they have so much enthusiasm and passion. I think they’ll do a great job of maintaining the bakery’s reputation.”

“We wanted to keep tradition alive and take care of older cliental but also elevate the bakery to bring in new customers and kids,” Morse said. “I knew how hard my family worked and knew it couldn’t stay in the family. We created a ‘wall of history’ to pay tribute to everything that came before.”

Hung up on the wall were framed newspaper clippings detailing Crosby Bakery’s long and fruitful history that has inspired multiple generations within the family to keep the business going as well as old pictures of both the Crosby and Hathaway’s Bakery storefronts. The bakery also has inspired customers to create their own traditions.

“When I was a fireman, we always got a quart of beans from the firehouse with a loaf of fresh-baked bread,” one loyal customer and former Nashua firefighter recalls. “It became a tradition. Saturdays was always frank and beans day.”

Throughout the day, new and longtime customers enjoyed a variety of baked goods, both sweet and savory. In celebration of the grand reopening, Crosby Bakery gave out freshly made donuts, raffle tickets for a chance to win a free customizable cake and free samples of carrot cake, gluten-free cupcakes and cheesecake they may soon be introducing to their already-extensive line-up of confections.

“Everything here is always good, especially the angel cake with pink frosting,” said Pam Clement, the Crosby family’s next-door neighbor for going on 40 years. “They’re a dynamic family, as is the next generation. I hope it stays in the family forever.”