50 Businesses, 50 Solutions #17

March 15 was Nellie Smith’s one-year business anniversary and she was supposed to be hosting friends and family for a party at her store, Red Wagon Bakery, in Canaan. But, given that the pandemic seemed to be worsening, she’d cancelled the party the previous week. Now, she watched as the news got increasingly worse, with schools and stores closing throughout New Hampshire.

“I was like oh my gosh, what do I do,” Smith recalled. She decided that she needed time to figure out what the state and nation were going to do to respond to the coronavirus, so she shut the doors to the bakery for a week to get her bearings.

During that time, a friend and customer had an interesting idea: why not learn from local farms and take a CSA approach to selling baked goods? Smith decided it was worth a try, so within a week she launched her CSB: community-supported bakery. When she announced it with an email and Facebook post, she was inundated with requests to join.

“We were a little unprepared for how popular it was,” Smith said. About seventy-five people signed up to receive a box each week filled with cookies, brownies, muffins and “baker’s choice” specialty items, like cinnamon rolls or cupcakes. Patrons could add on savory foods like quiche, pot-pie or soups.

Whether because of customers’ desire to support local business or to stress eat, the idea took off. It gained media attention as far away as New York City, and Smith had to cap participation. In addition to the 75 paid subscriptions, customers purchased another 20 or so boxes at one-third reduced cost, which Smith then donated to first responders, healthcare workers and families in need.

Although the program was popular, it was also stressful. The Red Wagon Bakery is a small space — both in the kitchen and the dining area. Rather than business being spread over a week, Smith and a few trusted employees needed to bake everything at the end of the week so the items would be fresh for distribution on Saturday. At a given time, 12-by-18-inch boxes lined the kitchen and dining area, pushing the small space to capacity.

“It was a huge production and it was very busy, but in a very condensed period of time,” Smith said.

She ran two rounds of the CSB, one in April and one in May. Starting at the beginning of June, she reopened for take-out and outdoor dining from Thursday through Sunday. Right now she has no plans to reopen for in-person dining. She’s concerned that would put too much pressure on her staff of mostly high-school students, and potentially expose them as COVID rates start climbing again around the country.

Although Smith is putting the CSB on the back burner for now, she’s glad to know that it’s an option in the future, especially through the slower winter months.

“That carried us through our two toughest months,” she said. “Before this, I had been going on a wish and a prayer. Not only did it carry us through, but it allowed us to come out on the other side of a pandemic doing ok.”

Many people who were not familiar with Red Wagon Bakery are continuing customers even now that the CSB is over, ordering specialty items like quiches and savory pies.

If there is a second iteration of the CSB, Smith is considering using a commercial kitchen with a more spacious area of baking and assembling. For now, she’s happy to know that there’s interest in a community-supported bakery even in a small New Hampshire town.

“It’s definitely something that I think is a tried and true fallback for us,” Smith said.

This story is part of the 50 Businesses, 50 Solutions series, shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative, that aims to highlight how business leaders across the state, from mom and pop shops, to large corporations have adapted to meet the challenges and disruptions caused by the novel coronavirus in the hopes others may be able to replicate these ideas and innovations. Tell us your story here. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.