It’s one of those pillar businesses in a small community. Right up there with the butcher and the candlestick maker.
“It’s a nice place to meet people for coffee… it’s a buzzing place quite often,” says Cynthia Olivas, one of the four partners involved in Nelson’s downtown Kootenay Bakery Café Cooperative.
Located at 377 Baker Street, The Kootenay Bakery Café certainly buzzes with activity, but it’s so much more than a place for coffee. With treats and menu items running the gamut of tastes, it’s become one of those perfect businesses that fit in so well with the Nelson vibe.
This Saturday the bakery will celebrate its tenth anniversary of becoming a co-op and moving into its own facility. There will be giveaways, live music, free cookies and free cake at 2 p.m.
The roots of the Kootenay Bakery Café Cooperative were planted 20 years ago when Leonard Nicoll arrived from Alberta to soak in the Kootenay lifestyle. With a long history in baking, the native Edmontonian came to Nelson just when the Kootenay Country Store Cooperative was moving from one end of Baker Street (where Gerick’s currently resides) to the other.
Looking like a good fit, Nicoll opened The Kootenay Baker in space he sub-leased from the country store.
When the Kootenay Co-Op outgrew its old space and decided to expand into the area occupied by The Kootenay Baker, Nicoll had some difficult decisions to make.
“It was something that I couldn’t do on my own,” Nicoll explains. “It was getting too big and a bigger financial responsibility. My wife brought up the idea of a workers’ cooperative and I brought the idea to the staff that was working with me. It went from there.”
The newly formed workers’ cooperative initially had seven members. The group found a space in the 300 block of Baker, educated themselves on how a workers’ cooperative operated, got their financing in place and 10 years ago this month opened under the new shingle The Kootenay Bakery Café Cooperative.
A scratch bakery, nothing is premade. The staff create all the wonderful baked and deli goods with sustainability in mind. Local organic food supply is strongly supported and the results are customer taste proven.
“It’s a hard business to make money in, especially if you do it from scratch,” says Olivas. “The labour is quite extensive, we could make a lot more money if we just brought in buckets of filling or buckets of icing. So it’s a value choice and it’s also what keeps us excited about the business. All of us are food people, we love what we make.”
Keeping customer’s dietary needs in mind, it’s also a bakery that everybody can find something they can bite into. You name it, they likely have something that fits — egg free, dairy free, gluten free are all options.
“We try to have something that everybody can have… that is one of our niches,” says Nicoll.
One of the most impressive parts of the business is what customer’s don’t see. In the basement is where much of the action takes place. A team of bakers put together all the fresh items in the morning and early afternoon. About 25 per cent of it gets shipped out to the Okanagan and as far away as Calgary, but the rest stays right on Baker Street for locals to enjoy.
“A lot of people don’t realize how many people work here,” says Nicoll. “There is a minimum of 22 on the payroll, but more like 25 these days. When you come in and see the staff that is serving you, you don’t know what is behind the scenes. We do support a lot of people in the community.”
And all of those staff are part of the bigger energy behind the business. With profit sharing as an incentive, the team at The Kootenay Bakery Café get it done.
“We have an awesome staff,” Nicoll says. “They believe in what we are doing, they like our vision and mission statement because those values live in them too. Because of that there is a lot of energy here.”
Currently the worker’s co-op includes four members: Nicoll, Olivas, Deborah Desilets and Sarah Rodgers. All four will be joining the rest of the staff in celebrating the decade that was. There will be events all week, the live music on Saturday runs from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and to top it off there will be “an awesome” birthday cake cut at 2 p.m.
As it heads into its second decade, the question has to be asked: Will The Kootenay Bakery Café Cooperative be part of the local downtown mix long enough to cut cake on 20 years?
“I might not be here… but who knows,” Nicoll says with a smile. “We’re here for right now and as long as we can produce what our customers want or enjoy then it will be here as long as we are supported. That’s the circle.”