The shelves at Bakery of Heidi and Willy in Alfred are filled daily, but you need to move quickly because the store itself will close in a few weeks for winter.
The business model of being open early October to December 31 represents a life choice made by the husband-and-wife team of veteran bakers, Heidi and Willy Suter, yet it has become a very successful one.
“People have asked us, ‘Why only three months open? Why can you not open the whole year?’ I tell them, it’s a choice of living for us. We’ve worked all our lives. Very hard,” says Heidi.
After their arrival in Canada in 1992, the pair operated several commercial bakeries before settling into a smaller, and simply named, business on County Road 17.
The bakery with stainless-steel pastry sheeter, Hobart floor mixer, ovens, pastry tables and other equipment was established in 1994: it’s at least three times the size of the more recently added retail store, sales counter and shelves packed with cakes, cookies and other assorted and sundry pastries.
It’s a culmination of two lives spent as bakers.
Word of mouth helped their success
Both Swiss-born, Willy, having started his baking career as a young teenager, trained to become a professional pastry chef for three years at a culinary school near Lucerne; Heidi, who met Willy when she was 19, has been baking just as long as well.
When COVID-19 hit, it changed their approach to business when markets were shut down and restrictions imposed.
“When we decided to open a store, it went very well with locals,” says Heidi. “When we had no more markets, people called us up and said, ‘Where can we get your baking?’ We said okay, and renovated a little bit, modernized a little bit, did a few things and then hoped for the best.”
Now nearing the end of their fifth season with the store, the best turned out to be quite good, with customers travelling from far and wide to Alfred and Plantagenet Township to purchase the pair’s Swiss-German pastries.
To name just a few of those that they bake daily by the dozens, there are baguettes, sourdough, Linzer torte, walnut-fudge cake, poppy seed strudel, gâteau St-Honoré and pain au chocolat as well as traditional croissant.
A ”wasp” cake, perhaps similar to the bienenstich (or “bee sting cake”), is honey-roasted hazelnuts and raspberry jam – and it’s just delicious and full-bodied in the way German-style sweets often are. I also sampled a very good hazelnut croissant and a dynamite cinnamon roll.
Word of mouth and the power of social media, a baking algorithm you might say, played a significant role in generating business, including attracting customers from Ottawa, Kemptville, Brockville and even Montreal.
“It was amazing that first year,” Heidi says. “All we did really was put a sign up and open a Facebook page.”
Six months of work in three month
In an area where you most expect a lineup of Franco-Ontarian baked products, the Swiss-German foundation of their work has found a robust niche in the market.
While she seemed reluctant to select them, Heidi identified a few bestsellers: the stollen, a traditional Christmas-time powder-sugared fruit bread with nuts, spices, candied fruit, and rich marzipan that she says, “is very European,” as well as soft gingerbread with almond paste.
“That also is very European,” she adds. “And then we have our very popular cookie plates. Obviously, when then we opened the store, we had to expand our product selections.”
Each year, the bakery attends three seasonal markets: the Eastern Ontario Craft & Gift Christmas Market in Nepean, the bustling German Christkindlmarkt held by the Maple Leaf-Almrausch Club in Carlsbad Springs and the Canadian Museum of History’s Christmas market which runs November 21-24 in Gatineau.
At times as the business grew, Willy, according to Heidi, would be champing at the bit to turn out more and more types of baking. But in accordance with that life choice seeking balance and some restraint, they pulled back on the pastry reins.
“I’m the one who kind of holds him back and goes like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s just do this for now and then let’s see how it goes,” she says. “And so we changed slowly over the last five years. »
Eschewing artificial ingredients and preservatives, the bakery tries to use local products, when possible, though with the large volume they make that generally isn’t possible.
“We use high-quality chocolate, which means when you leave it out at 22 degrees celsius. it’s melting. So, you know it’s good chocolate,” Heidi says.
With staffer Sondra Lamothe, only three people operate the bakery. Willy has a typical and demanding baker’s hours: he’s up at 2 a.m. to begin the day, with Heidi and Lamothe coming in at 7 a.m. to get everything ready for customers. Willy then heads home for a short nap before returning to the bakery.
“We know what we do,” Heidi says. “We have the experience, the knowledge, and we want to keep the baking quality high. We calculate the hours we put in, and it’s almost six months of work in those three months.”
Creating demand took pastry education
Gearing themselves to two specific holidays in those months, Thanksgiving and Christmas, they in effect have created a FOMO factor that creates a compressed demand: seasonal shoppers, Heidi says, are well advised to order online and well ahead of time.
“For (Yule) logs and cookies, a lot of people just show up before Christmas and expect that we’ll have all the selections available.”
That demand, however, wasn’t always so strong, Heidi explains as she looks back on their history: today’s success was driven by patience and slowly building a market and desire for Swiss- and German-inspired pastries.
Those first days at the markets, she says, was a lot of standing with a tray of samples and educating customers about their baked goods.
“But today, it’s nice to see our regulars educating a new customer at the store. They’ll say, ‘I’ve had this pastry for many years and it’s so good!’ That’s different than me telling them. It’s a verification about the quality. When that person buys, it’s the greatest compliment.”
During the holiday season, Bakery of Heidi and Willy will be open December 18-23 (8 a.m. – 5 p.m.); December 24 (8 a.m. – 4 p.m.); December 27-31 (8 a.m. – 5 p.m.). Order holiday baking by December 18 to ensure availability.
Food writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of “Farm to Table” and co-author of “Cooking with Shakespeare.” Follow him on Instagram @andrewcoppolino
