My flu seems to have calmed down for a bit, so I'll take this chance to post my delayed goodie for Valentine's day : ) Here's the interview with Sweet Lee's Rustic Bakery…! :D
I've met Liana and her brother Greg back in 2010 at the craft fair at Dawson college. They had a table full of yummy goodies that kept tempting me…! After one bite of their salted savoury scones, I was addicted! Over time their business slowly and surely grew as they went from fairs to events. They finally opened up their first bakery in St-Henri in 2011. In January 2014, they opened the year with a bang, introducing their relocated gorgeous bakery. I decided to go take a peek at 4150 Wellington street and I met with Greg by a freezing February afternoon.
How did you start that wonderful adventure?
My sister Liana always wanted her own bakery. She would talk about it a lot and I realized she was in it over her head. I told her : ''You won't be able to do it alone so I'm going to do this with you'', gave her a hand at least. We then started furnishing small cafés, doing small orders, fairs and soon enough we needed a retail space. Then we started looking for a little space, starting out small, try not to go wild. And then we found a spot in St-Henri and stayed there for about two years and a half. When we decided to go to Verdun, it took us almost a year to get the new place ready to open.
We started with small amounts of our own savings. The first event we ever did was a neighbourhood gathering. We were selling baked good and had invited a few of our friends that displayed their art. I guess you can say it's where we got the very first taste of Sweet Lee's.
Describe Sweet Lee in three words (or maybe 5): Heum…. a rustic bakery…. ? (laughs)
Well, I guess… natural, hearty and homy…. And definitely original, different.
Why the move from St Henri to Verdun?
We couldn't expand as much as we wanted over at St Henri, even if we were well established. We only had two seats and it was cramped, with not a lot of space to develop our products too. It wasn't what we wanted. It took us almost a year to find this new place, we looked in Verdun and St-Henri but since St-Henri is growing in popularity, the price of rent skyrocketed ( 2 to 3 times what is used to be…! ) Also we had been living in Verdun for a time and with our hyper busy schedule is a very good thing to be close to home. Now we have to get used to all that space and the seating spots, I guess we're almost like a restaurant now. Also we went from 2 employees to 8 so it's a good change.
Why opening a rustic bakery?
Why the move from St Henri to Verdun?
We couldn't expand as much as we wanted over at St Henri, even if we were well established. We only had two seats and it was cramped, with not a lot of space to develop our products too. It wasn't what we wanted. It took us almost a year to find this new place, we looked in Verdun and St-Henri but since St-Henri is growing in popularity, the price of rent skyrocketed ( 2 to 3 times what is used to be…! ) Also we had been living in Verdun for a time and with our hyper busy schedule is a very good thing to be close to home. Now we have to get used to all that space and the seating spots, I guess we're almost like a restaurant now. Also we went from 2 employees to 8 so it's a good change.
Why opening a rustic bakery?
We like knowing what we eat. We're not into ''pretentious-looking'' food that is overly priced or decorated. We like food that looks like food and that tastes like it's supposed to be. We also put the lowest amount of ingredients as possible to make it as rich in flavour as possible. We want to make it as healthy - even if we serve a lot of deserts - but we don't want to add ''garbage'' like preservatives in our food.
How long did it took you to set up Sweet Lee's ?
We evolved over time, like we had our business cards redone 6 times, tweaked a bit the logo. But you've got to go with the flow I guess. Adjust with where you are heading at a certain time. Now we have a more refined look than our previous location which was more of an old country home look. But we always had the same mentality over all these years.
