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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have asked us, \u2018Why only three months open? Why can you not open the whole year?\u2019 I tell them, it\u2019s a choice of living for us. We\u2019ve worked all our lives. Very hard,\u201d says Heidi.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The bakery with stainless-steel pastry sheeter, Hobart floor mixer, ovens, pastry tables and other equipment was established in 1994: it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a culmination of two lives spent as bakers.<\/p>\n
Word of mouth helped their success<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n When COVID-19 hit, it changed their approach to business when markets were shut down and restrictions imposed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we decided to open a store, it went very well with locals,\u201d says Heidi. \u201cWhen we had no more markets, people called us up and said, \u2018Where can we get your baking?\u2019 We said okay, and renovated a little bit, modernized a little bit, did a few things and then hoped for the best.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Swiss-German pastries.<\/p>\n 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, g\u00e2teau St-Honor\u00e9 and pain au chocolat as well as traditional croissant.<\/p>\n A \u201dwasp\u201d cake, perhaps similar to the bienenstich (or \u201cbee sting cake\u201d), is honey-roasted hazelnuts and raspberry jam \u2013 and it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was amazing that first year,\u201d Heidi says. \u201cAll we did really was put a sign up and open a Facebook page.\u201d<\/p>\n Six months of work in three month<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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, \u201cis very European,\u201d as well as soft gingerbread with almond paste.<\/p>\n \u201cThat also is very European,\u201d she adds. \u201cAnd then we have our very popular cookie plates. Obviously, when then we opened the store, we had to expand our product selections.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Christmas market which runs November 21-24 in Gatineau.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m the one who kind of holds him back and goes like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let\u2019s just do this for now and then let\u2019s see how it goes,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd so we changed slowly over the last five years.”<\/p>\n Eschewing artificial ingredients and preservatives, the bakery tries to use local products, when possible, though with the large volume they make that generally isn\u2019t possible.<\/p>\n \u201cWe use high-quality chocolate, which means when you leave it out at 22 degrees celsius. it\u2019s melting. So, you know it\u2019s good chocolate,\u201d Heidi says.<\/p>\n With staffer Sondra Lamothe, only three people operate the bakery. Willy has a typical and demanding baker\u2019s hours: he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know what we do,\u201d Heidi says. \u201cWe have the experience, the knowledge, and we want to keep the baking quality high. We calculate the hours we put in, and it\u2019s almost six months of work in those three months.\u201d<\/p>\n Creating demand took pastry education<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFor (Yule) logs and cookies, a lot of people just show up before Christmas and expect that we\u2019ll have all the selections available.\u201d<\/p>\n That demand, however, wasn\u2019t always so strong, Heidi explains as she looks back on their history: today\u2019s success was driven by patience and slowly building a market and desire for Swiss- and German-inspired pastries.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cBut today, it\u2019s nice to see our regulars educating a new customer at the store. They\u2019ll say, \u2018I\u2019ve had this pastry for many years and it\u2019s so good!\u2019 That\u2019s different than me telling them. It\u2019s a verification about the quality. When that person buys, it\u2019s the greatest compliment.\u201d<\/p>\n During the holiday season, Bakery of Heidi and Willy will be open December 18-23 (8 a.m. \u2013 5 p.m.); December 24 (8 a.m. \u2013 4 p.m.); December 27-31 (8 a.m. \u2013 5 p.m.). Order holiday baking by December 18 to ensure availability.<\/p>\n Food writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of \u201cFarm to Table\u201d and co-author of \u201cCooking with Shakespeare.\u201d Follow him on Instagram @andrewcoppolino<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":104049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-affaires"],"acf":[],"featured_media_global":[],"yoast_head":"\n