Top: John Lopez works in the kitchen of J&K North Main Bakery. He is looking for a bigger space to move into. Photo by Jason Dole.
Above: A slideshow of photos from Sullivan County bakeries.
On New Year's Eve, Livingston Manor’s Flour Power Bakery, a high-profile local business with a devoted following, closed abruptly. A brief email to friends and customers titled “There will be no more bakery” made it clear that Flour Power’s doors will not reopen.
Small, independent, artisanal bakers have been on the rise in Sullivan County. Over the past decade, many new entrepreneurs have emerged in the region to tap into a growing market for local food.
But lately, the ranks of Sullivan County bakers have been thinning.
Above: The popular Flour Power Bakery in Livingston Manor closed its doors this winter. Photo by Jason Dole.
Flour Power is one of at least four bakeries to close in the past year: Bake You Happy in Liberty shut down in the fall. Crave in Bloomingburg closed last May amid stories of break-ins, vandalism, and electrical problems. Earlier in 2012, Cohen’s Bakery of Ellenville closed its Sullivan County branch on Broadway in Monticello.
Bakeries tend to be beloved by their customers, who may not realize that behind the case full of cute cupcakes, running a bakery is a tough job with long hours and thin profit margins.
So what does it take to succeed as a baker in the rural Catskills? We talked to several successful local bakery owners -- and a few whose bake-shop dreams have been shelved -- to find out.
Spread thin
“It wasn’t any one single thing,” says Denise Rowley of why she and husband J.R. Rowley decided to close Flour Power Bakery. “You’re up early and you leave late. J.R. would sometimes do 100 hours in a week. It was too exhausting.”
J.R. and Denise started selling their multigrain breads and sweets at the Liberty farmers’ market in 2006. At the time it closed, Flour Power had a bakery and cafe in Livingston Manor, sold at multiple farmers’ markets year-round, and supplied wholesale baked goods to nearly 30 retailers across Sullivan County. From the farm market in Barryville to Eureka Cafe in Grahamsville, Flour Power literally reached to all corners of Sullivan County.
“You have to spread yourself out as far as you can to capture the sales,” saysd Rowley, “but it’s exhausting. The toll was too heavy, energy-wise. A lot of stress and a lot of rushing and a lot of hours on your legs.”
On some days, Flour Power was operating in three locations at once – two farmers’ markets and the retail space. Though it came as a surprise, their closure seems to be a case of small business burnout meets personal family needs.
“We didn’t see any other way to make it work,” says Denise Rowley. “We had reached a point where we had a good staff. At the moment of closing we were all in tears.”
Above: After decades of operation, the former Bagel-O's Bakery in Liberty now stands vacant. Photo by Jason Dole.
Loss in Liberty
Joanne Dickson Geraine knows the feeling. Her own bakery, Bake You Happy, recently closed in Liberty.
“My heart is broken,” says Geraine. “I put a lot into it, but business was so slow that I was going from month to month, then it was almost day to day. It got to the point where the question was do I keep pulling resources from my family, or do I let it go?”
Bake You Happy specialized in craft cupcakes and designer birthday cakes, but Geraine understands why local folks balk at paying $2 per cupcake when they can get a half dozen for $3.50 at the same place they buy socks.
“My biggest competitor was Wal-Mart,” she says.
Big-box bakers aside, Geraine’s biggest day-to-day struggle came from within her own home. Running a bakery meant putting in 60-70 hours a week on top of raising four children. When the slow fall season coincided with sick kids and Superstorm Sandy, that was the end of Bake You Happy.
Geraine also explains that her business may have been built too quickly on unsteady financial ground.
“The problem with my bakery is I didn’t take any loans,” she says.
Part of that decision was due to what she describes as local development initiatives that unintentionally hamper certain small businesses. Beyond that, she and her family thought they could do it themselves, cheaper. She recruited her son and other students in Tri-Valley Central School’s construction program to build counters and shelving. She bought used equipment thinking she’d be able to upgrade before long. Now Geraine says she should have taken loans and started with two years of working capital.
“I’m a smart business woman,” she says, “but I didn’t do this smart.”
That type of big-picture smarts is the first thing Sullivan County Chamber of Commerce Vice President Cathy Paty recommends for any small business person who wants to pursue his or her dream. An independent baker also needs to be the purchaser, bookkeeper, marketing director, and more.
“You need to wear all of those hats,” says Paty. “Sole-proprietor businesses can be extremely successful in Sullivan County, but you have to do your homework.”
The right balance
Erin Allison thinks that she is striking the right balance between the business sense and a passion for baking. Edible Art by Erin is only six months old, but Allison considers her small business a success. The mother of two bakes out of her health-department-certified home on the back roads between Liberty and Fallsburg, just as her mentor Linda Manzalillo did for years as “Cakes by Linda.”
“You have to have business sense and you have to have heart,” says Allison, who got into baking by making cakes for nieces and nephews. To Allison, baking wasn’t a dream, just a stop-gap until her children are old enough for school. The way things are going now, she may not return to her previous job in insurance.
Another new bakery proceeding with caution is Phyllis & Maris Bakery and Catskill Cookie Company. Chef and owner David Newhem and his partner, Ian Newhem, rent a commercial kitchen near Mountaindale and specialize in wedding cakes.
The Newhems want to buy a space that will allow them to do a mix of wholesale and retail. They’re proceeding with “an abundance of caution,” starting their search in the Town of Mamakating, where the Wurtsboro Board of Trade has been very supportive.
“I feel there’s a real need for a bakery in this area,” says Newhem. “But you have to be careful because the economy is still a wreck. It’s a matter of doing your research instead of being unpleasantly surprised in the end.”
In Jeffersonville, the Brandenburg Pastry Bakery tried the slow-and-steady cautious approach and is doing so well, they’re ready for an upgrade.
“The lease is up at the end of 2013,” says Errol Flynn of the Brandenburg’s current location, a small space somewhat removed from other food service businesses in Jeffersonville. “We have one place in mind that would still be in Jeff, but would be more visible and larger, more of a cafe environment.”
Sarah & Errol Flynn opened Brandenburg early in 2011. Errol grew up in Sullivan County and met Sarah, an accomplished pastry chef, while working in her native Germany. Their bakery features cakes, breads, and pastries with an emphasis on heirloom German recipes, tapping into the old German roots of western Sullivan County.
Challenges
Errol Flynn notes that one traditional challege for bakeries becomes more serious in a rural economy.
“You’re always holding on to perishable food,” he says. “In a restaurant, people order; it gets made. At a bakery, you can’t have a menu and pop out what a customer wants 15 minutes ahead of time. You have to prep, but you don’t want to overproduce.”
To avoid waste and to compensate for slow business, the Flynns take 4 to 6 weeks off each winter. Many businesses in Sullivan County employ similar strategies, to varying degrees of success. For some, it’s a necessary part of dealing with the seasonal flux.
Cathy Paty of the County Chamber warns that such changes can be risky, and need to be explained clearly to the public. At Brandenburg, custom signs with a hibernating bear told loyal customers the Flynns would be back on February 13th.
Hibernation is anathema to Jane Axamethy, owner of the Bake House in Kauneonga Lake. She stays open seven days a week year-round.
Above: Jane Axamethy of the Bake House in Kauneonga Lake gives fresh bread to Spencer Cutler of the neighboring Fat Lady Cafe. Photo by Jason Dole.
“I’m open, but it’s hard to get through the winter,” says Axamethy. “But the good thing about being so small, I can down-staff and get through the winter on my own.”
Perhaps more than any other baker in Sullivan County, Axamethy bears witness to the challenges facing bakeries. Her first Bake House was flooded out in Livingston Manor in June, 2006. The following May she opened in Kauneonga Lake. It didn’t last.
“I was too successful. I had a line going out the door in the summer. So the landlord wanted more money, but in the winter it was still slow,” Axamethy says.
Axamethy spent the next two years baking in the basement of her home, doing farmers markets, waiting for her current location – her fourth – to become available. Her second store in Kauneonga Lake has lasted longer than her others. “I’ve finally passed my year-and-a-half mark,” she says. “I will be here two years in May.”
Community
A main ingredient in Jane Axamethy’s recipe for success, apart from a strong work ethic, is community. Even at the end of the day in the middle of the week in the middle of the winter, a handful of folks are gathered at the Bake House, talking.
“We’re a community center,” she says. “If you want to find out something, come to the bakery. Especially during the political season.”
At the Bake House, the locals come in for whole grain toast before work in the morning. Folks stop in on their “bucket list” pilgrimage to the nearby Woodstock Festival site. Local musicians come to play. One woman came in day after day while writing her book.
“If you give people a decent product at a decent price they always come back,” says John Lopez, who runs J&K North Main Bakery in Liberty. But, he adds, it can be hard to maintain a fair price. On one hand, he says, larger distributors don’t want to sell ingredients to small bakeries. On the other hand, no matter the distributor, as with other food-based businesses, ingredient costs are always shifting.
“The price of your product fluctuates as the price of butter changes,” says Lopez. “Sugar jumps the same way, but you can’t keep jumping your prices on customers.”
Right now, J&K is turning down some offers for wholesale baking because of space limitations, although Lopez is looking for a new, bigger location.
Apart from cautious expansion, Lopez says there is one main strategy for any small bakery.
“You have to be more than one-dimensional,” he says, noting the days when a bakery could get by on bread alone are long gone. “You’ve got to try anything.”
Trying anything
A little further down Main Street, the next closest bakery defines what it means to try anything. Floyd & Bobo’s has succeeded as a bakery for more than five years by not just being a bakery.
“You have to do other things,” says Ellen Marino, who runs Floyd & Bobo’s Bakery and Snack Palace in Liberty with Louie Petraglia. They offer breakfast sandwiches, lunch, soups, and more. They even package and sell their own marinara sauce.
“We decided early on that we couldn’t make it just baking, because the area is so tough,” says Marino.
As Marino & Petraglia were planning the shop, neighbors kept asking if they planned to make breakfast sandwiches.
“They were hungry for that type of stuff,” she says. “Okay, then let’s offer pancakes, French toast, breakfast burritos.”
Floyd & Bobo’s also excels at branding. Rather than name the bakery after themselves, the proprietors got Kirk Mueller, a Warner Brothers animator and artist, to design the characters Floyd & Bobo – a cartoon boy and dog who populate the bakery’s logos.
Apart from branding and variety, Ellen Marino agrees with John Lopez on the importance of customer service. And like Jane Axamethy’s Bake House, Floyd and Bobo’s is another bakery where people come to be a part of a community.
“We know all of our customers’ names,” says Marino. “It’s like Cheers. We know what they want. That’s probably what’s keeping us here.”
The next step
That brings us back to Flour Power in Livingston Manor.
“Jane and Ellen are right,” says Denise Rowley. “Having a gathering place is key. That happens naturally. We had special events like brunches and gallery openings, music, slot cars. One of the things that’s upsetting people is we have lost a gathering place.”
And what comes next for Flour Power?
“We really don’t know,” says Rowley, who says she and J.R. are taking their time and focusing on family right now. She can’t speculate, but doesn’t exclude possible future Flour Power baking in some form. They plan to honor outstanding gift certificates, and will maintain their mailing list.
“We have pretty deep roots here, and J.R. just loves to feed people,” Denise says.
Correction 3/9/13: A previous version of this article misspelled David and Ian Newhem's last name. It also misstated the name of their business, which is Phyllis & Maris Bakery and the Catskill Cookie Company.
