Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Slice of life: Downtown Roanoke offers two bakeries
Downtown Roanoke now has two bakeries serving the needs of its workers and residents: On the Rise and Bread Craft.
JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times
Alex and Karen Eliades opened Bread Craft in December.
Above: On the Rise owner and operator Teal Batson has been running the bakery for six months. Below: Jewish rye is one of the bakery's daily breads.
Above: On the Rise owner and operator Teal Batson has been running the bakery for six months. Below: Jewish rye is one of the bakery's daily breads.
Food writer Lindsey Nair
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In a cheesy spaghetti Western, Alex Eliades and Teal Batson would stand at opposite ends of a street, their eyes blazing.
One would say, "This town ain't big enough for the two of us," and spit on the ground, then they would both twirl their rolling pins menacingly.
In reality, Eliades and Batson are two gentle-mannered bakers who just want to run successful businesses in downtown Roanoke, and they plan to focus more on the quality of their products than on dueling with one another.
So far, it seems to be working.
Downtown Roanoke has not been home to two bakeries since 2000, when Brothers Bakery closed, leaving only On the Rise Bread Co. to serve the needs of downtown workers and residents.
Over 16 years of ownership, Steve Hartman built a solid wholesale market for On the Rise, selling bread to restaurants and stores catering to retail customers with a line of breads and a small selection of sandwiches and pizzas for lunch.
In 2009, Hartman decided to sell On the Rise to Teal and Jeff Batson, who also own Wildflour Cafe at Towers Shopping Center. Teal, 39, now runs the bakery while Jeff, 38, concentrates on the cafe.
Also last year, Alex and Karen Eliades moved their mostly wholesale bakery, Bread Craft, from Peters Creek Road to Jefferson Street, where they have begun to focus more on retail business with breakfast pastries and lunch offerings.
The similarities between On the Rise and Bread Craft are hard to ignore, but their key differences may sustain them.
And because the residential landscape has changed so much in downtown Roanoke over the past five to 10 years, I'll bet there is enough demand for high-quality, freshly baked bread to keep both bakeries rolling.
On the Rise: Expanding on a good thing
In the late '90s, Teal Batson would never have thought she'd be where she is today.
Back then, she was a single gal working as a food and beverage manager at Denali National Park in Alaska.
"I was like, 'I'm never getting married and I'm never having kids,' " she said.
But then she met a chef named Jeff and everything changed. They now have two children, Mason, 2, and Kylee, 6 months.
Her other baby, of course, is the bakery.
When the Batsons bought On the Rise, they didn't feel the need to change the existing products. Customers even worried aloud that they would alter the bread recipes, but the Batsons have retained the same baker and they still sell the same variety of artisan breads and subs. They also still do business with many of the wholesale customers Hartman had wooed, as well as a few new ones.
"When something is this good, it doesn't make sense to mess with it," Teal said.
She did see an opportunity for some expansion on the retail side, though. She says Hartman used to make three pizzas each day and would run out long before the demand was gone. She went through seven pizzas on one of her first days in business.
To complement the bread, she sells salads and makes three homemade soups per day: carrot ginger, potato rosemary and tomato cheddar. They also sell paninis daily and make sticky buns every Saturday morning, letting the intoxicating aroma drift outside to where weekend shoppers peruse the farmers market.
She has added more sweets to the bakery's repertoire, including chocolate eclairs, cream puffs, cupcakes and whole cakes.
Other than that, a little advertising is all the Batsons think their bakery needs.
Even after 16 years, "I hear so often, 'Oh my gosh, your bread is so fabulous and I didn't even know you were down here,'" Teal said. "I feel like we need to be aggressive about getting the word out."
Bread Craft: A move to increase presence
While Teal Batson was in the wilds of Alaska, Alex Eliades, now 40, was indulging his newfound passion as a student at the San Francisco Baking Institute. In 2000, he went to work at The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.
He decided to open his own bakery in Roanoke in June 2006, renting 4,100 square feet at the corner of Hershberger and Peters Creek roads. The big, sprawling space lended itself well to wholesale business, and Eliades cranked out breads and pastries for restaurants and stores with the help of his head baker, Rebecca Yarwood.
They also began making wedding cakes for Roanoke's Ukrop's grocery store, which has since closed.
The retail side of Bread Craft was kind of a little-known secret at first, but before long Eliades' rack of creations sold out early in the day.
But the location still felt way off the beaten path, and the Eliadeses, who have two children named Graham and Alaina, started looking for a place with more foot traffic and the potential for retail growth. An empty storefront on Jefferson Street that used to house Milan Tobacconists caught Alex's eye.
The renovation took way longer than expected. For a month, his 11,000-pound Bongard oven was out of commission because they had to take it apart, move it downtown, build a new concrete slab for it to sit on and reassemble it.
He says he was fortunate that Ukrop's loaned him substantial freezer space to stockpile bread for his wholesale customers. And once the oven was back in one piece, he could bake for those customers while his Parisian-style retail shop took shape around him.
Bread Craft opened in December, offering a wide variety of standard breads, along with daily specials such as onion dill rye and chocolate cherry sourdough.
They also make fresh croissants, scones, cookies and daily pastry specials such as the in-season fruit pastry, which have been selling well with coffee at breakfast.
A few weeks later, they added sandwiches and personal-sized pizzas made with freshly made mozzarella. They also sell cakes, and Yarwood is making wedding cakes again.
"It's smaller," Eliades said of his new bakery, "but it turned out to be really a blessing in disguise because we don't have to run around as much as we did at the old place. Everything is closer together."
It's about pleasing the customers
If there's anything these bakers love more than bread, it's their customers.
Batson likes seeing regulars come in for lunch. Eliades was thrilled recently when a customer recommended Bread Craft on her Facebook page.
Slowly, word is getting out about the changes at these bakeries. There's just the small problem that they are competing for customers.
"We are concerned with that," Batson said. "But both my husband and I have felt that if you do what you do well and you provide friendly service, all you can do is your best.
"Competition keeps you on your toes," she added. "It keeps you thriving and creative."
Eliades said he likes that philosophy.
"I would hate to be the guy who puts somebody else out of business. I have talked to plenty of people in the past who like the bread at On the Rise and like going there," he said. "I just want to grab the people that like what I like to do. It's about taking care of every individual."
As a bread lover who works within walking distance of both bakeries, whatever shall I do?
Take turns, that's what.
