Buffalo’s beloved BreadHive is planning on opening its first restaurant location at 402 Connecticut Street in coming months. The bakery has become a food staple for artisan bread and bagels, soft sourdough pretzel and granola lovers throughout the city, ever since opening on the West Side in April of 2014.
BreadHive currently wholesales its baked products to fifteen restaurants and three stores in the area (including the Lexington-Co-op), making the worker cooperative a fan favorite from Larkinville to North Buffalo and beyond.
Now owners Valerie Rettberg-Smith, Emily Stewart and Allison Ewing are branching out on their next business venture by establishing a retail bakery and sandwich shop at 402 Connecticut Street. The business will set up in the former Connecticut Street Sandwich Shop, a short-lived business that originally built out the space for food service. The building originally housed an Italian men’s club.
“We will be launching the restaurant location selling pastries, salads, soups, Public coffee (the basics), sandwiches, and a case full of our baked goods,” said co-owner Allison Ewing. “We never thought that we would have gotten to this point as fast as we did, but the community has embraced us. We will close the take-out window at our original location on Baines (near Grant Street), in order to solely concentrate on production of baked goods. The Connecticut Street location will be the new retail operation, and will serve as a place to grab a loaf of bread, cookies, scones, croissants, a quick lunch, and a simple cup of coffee. It’s going to be very welcoming and a great addition to the block.”
Since opening on Baines, BreadHive has managed to operate in a capacity that has been dictated by product demand. Instead of going door-to-door in search of customers, the owners have been inundated with requests for their wholesale goods. The good fortune has allowed owners to ramp up and diversify in a relatively short time frame. They have done this by paying attention to quality, and delivering foods that the public want, and that restaurants and retailers are calling for. The new restaurant will be a welcoming, quaint, and productive spin-off from the original bakery.
In order to prepare for their new venture, owners decided to start serving up a series of Bagels & Brooze brunches at the Hydraulic Hearth (HH) in Larkinville. The experience allowed them to see what sort of menu items people gravitated to, while getting a chance to learn about the operational aspects of the restaurant business. The partnership with HH also helped people to associate the BreadHive name with something other than baked goods.
“We’re excited to open a place where people can walk inside and have a BreadHive experience,” said Valerie Rettberg-Smith, an owner of BreadHive who will be managing the café. “We have wanted to expand into prepared foods since the bakery first opened, and can’t wait to put our own spin on sandwiches and croissants.”
What is truly fascinating about this grassroots bakery operation is how it all started. Allison pointed out that the way they got their initial funding to open and operate was through an initial public offering, believe it or not. We don’t normally associate mom ‘n pop businesses with public offerings, but that’s exactly what happened in this case. “Before anyone tasted a loaf of bread, 40 people came together to invest a total of $65,000,” Allison explained. “We’re doing the same thing to get this retail bakery/sandwich shop off the ground. We’re aiming for $40,000 – in return, the investors get nonvoting preferred stock shares, which are open to NYS residents. Co-ops are a great way to capitalize a business – the funding comes from the community. ‘Good bread, good work’ – that’s our motto. People believe in us and our mission. They want to be a part of something that they feel good about.”
Fans of BreadHive already know that the bakery is tight with other local, like-minded, food and beverage operations, including Public Espresso + Coffee, Barrel + Brine and First Light Creamery. Those companies will all be represented at the new restaurant location, in some capacity. In the end, this new BreadHive adventure will be a great addition to Connecticut Street, which has experienced some incredible culinary advancements in recent years. Now it’s time to take it one step further, by creating a delicious bakery-driven destination that revolves around a passion for preparing artisanal foods for those who just can’t get enough of the BreadHive way of life.
Contact emily@breadhive.com to become a Founding Member. Click here to visit BreadHive online, or to learn about the Bread Share program.
Lead photo by Chris Pierce McCleary