Happy Holidays

Thank you to our customers and vendors for all your support in 2012. Thank you to our friends on social media for making the online baking community so special. Thank you to everyone working on our new bake shop. We are grateful for each and every one of you and we couldn't do it without you, that's for sure.

We look forward to opening the retail store in early 2013. The last two months have been a blur trying to work on the bakery at 75 Hillside (Fairfield, CT) and keeping the wholesale and online orders filled in Milford. Every person we spoke to said it would take longer than we expected to finish the build out - they were right. Lesson learned? It's worth waiting to get the job done right.

To the families still struggling with the aftermath of Sandy and the families in Newtown, we are especially thinking of you and sending love.

Wishing you peace and happy baking in the New Year. 

Love, 

Michelle

Sweet & Simple Bake Shop

Big news. BIG.

We’re opening a bake shop!

It will be called Sweet & Simple Bake Shop, and located at 75 Hillside Road, Fairfield, Connecticut.

We’ve signed the lease. We’ve submitted the plans to the Town of Fairfield. It’s happening.

We. Are. So. Excited.

Some of you know, we’ve been looking for a just-right-space for months. We wanted something not too small, not too big and definitely closer to home. Sweet & Simple launched in December, 2009 and it’s been three wonderful – fantastic! - years of baking, learning the food business and building a wholesale customer base.  It’s high time to hang our own little shingle. We love the new location, the other businesses in the shopping center and the opportunity to be part of our neighborhood.

What’s the time table for opening? We’ll open as soon as humanly possible. Stay tuned right here on the blog. I’m going to be posting lots of pictures and progress reports. For any of you thinking about opening your own bakery, I hope some of the information ends up being useful.

What will we serve? Our signature American-style baked goods and great coffee, tea and hot chocolate. We’re going to launch with a modest menu of breakfast-y baked goods, cookies, cupcakes and layer cakes. Look for new products and specials every month. We’ll also have a “gift” store with pretty cake stands, note cards, cookie jars and other treasures. We’ll be taking catering orders and continue to serve our online customers. The party favor business has been great fun – we love parties! - and we look forward to customers now coming to the shop to sample in person before ordering.

Thank you for your continued support. We love you. We hope you know that!

XO,

Michelle

Sweet & Simple Gives CTbites A Taste

I let the crew at Fairfield County’s CTbites sample my homemade cookies. The results? Delicious.  Read more

Early Spring, 2012

Cherry blossom.

It’s spring. To celebrate, this weekend I cleaned the house. By cleaned I mean I really cleaned. I scrubbed and polished and vacuumed and dusted and drank too much coffee - not necessarily in that order. 


A full Saturday in spring spent cleaning the house means I am already behind in the yard. And my garden, like all of New England, is waking up early this year. In addition to the usual suspects sprouting in all the right (and some wrong) places, the cherry trees are blossoming and most of the daffodils have bloomed. Past years, I have had daffodils blooming thru late April along with the lilacs. 


It's time to rake and put down mulch and edge and tidy up... If you garden even a little, you know how exciting spring is. The soil is warming up, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping. You look to see what survived the winter. You lament the loss of perennials you lovingly planted last year or years before. You make plans and you feel grand. Sweet & Simple has taken a toll on my yard and garden, after all there are only so many hours in a spring or summer season, and I've come to terms with a few more weeds and more containers for pops of color. But I love the simple peace and quiet of working outside and I've promised myself  a few extras hours of gardening this year.

To bring a little spring indoors, this morning I made the tiniest bouquet of violas. The weensy perfume bottle marked “Lazell’s Perfumes New York” is a thrift store treasure, the violas are from a planter at my front door.

I'm seeing dramatically fewer daffodils this year, so it looks like I’ll be busy planting more in the fall.  I like to order daffodil bulbs from a Connecticut company - Van Engelen Inc. 

Daffodils in my backyard.

Happy spring to you! I wish you all the joy of the renewal season.

3 Short Twitter Stories

Alan's beautiful bowls.

The foodie/cooking/baking Twitter community is one of my favorite online hangouts.  It’s a fun and creative group of people – a neighborhood, if you will – where everyone shares common interests.

For the most part, I follow the foodie/baking community. But, I also enjoy following small business experts, social media experts, people I work with professionally, other local businesses and news media. For me and Sweet & Simple, Twitter is a source of real time local and global information, not only a place to talk about cooking and baking.

Sweet & Simple's YouTube Channel

If you had told me two years ago, just before Sweet & Simple launched, that I would be sitting at my desk typing a blog post to introduce my new YouTube channel I would have called you bonkers and rolled my eyes. Seriously.

Over the summer, I needed some pictures of myself holding Sweet & Simple pre-packaged baked goods. I asked Sandra Downie and Melani Lust, with whom I worked earlier this year, if they could help me again. I also asked a friend (and neighbor) if he would join us and shoot some video footage of me talking about Sweet & Simple.

I had originally planned on one long-ish video to tell my story and promote Sweet & Simple, but that idea did not work out as well as I hoped. It turns out that telling my story to a camera is not that simple - but either is starting a small business! So, we came up with the idea of 7 mini-videos. My words were unrehearsed and unscripted which is pretty obvious. Together they tell the story of how I took an idea that started in my home kitchen two years ago and turned it into a wholesale cookie business.

Thanks for watching. And thank you, especially, for being part of Sweet & Simple - it has been an incredible journey and an extraordinary learning experience for me! I love my job.

This is me in my kitchen holding some of my Sweet & Simple pre-packaged baked goods.
Thank you, Mom, for the beautiful apron. I really do love it.

Sweet and Simple In Westport Magazine

Sweet and Simple appears as a feature article in the July/August 2011 issue of Westport Magazine. Read about baking up entrepreneurship from scratch by downloading the .pdf.

Caroline Dowd-Higgins Discusses My Business Recipe

I was recently featured on career coach Caroline Dowd-Higgins' blog. She tells the not so simple story of how I took my passion for baking and turned it into a business:

"So how does the Chief Household Officer now manage a growing baking business in addition to her family? Michelle admits that work/life integration is a challenge. Her boys are all very excited about the business and in addition to being expert taste testers and home kitchen helpers – they enjoy seeing their mom gain recognition and achieve success with her business in their community."

You can read the whole article here. [source: Caroline Dowd-Higgins]