Stuart Howe, owner of Saint John Bakery. Image: Cherise Letson/Huddle Today
Less than a year after opening on the East Side of the city, Saint John Bakery is getting ready to open a second location on the city’s West Side.
The new bakery will be located at Lancaster Plaza on Manawagonish Road beside Dominos Pizza.
Owner Stuart Howe says he always planned to open a second location but thought it would be in another city. But he says an experience he had while renovating his home made him change those plans.
“The revelation came, believe or not, when I was renovating my house. I rented an Airbnb near Saint John Marina and driving through those neighbourhoods, which I hadn’t driven through for years, I realized how many folks lived on the West Side,” says Howe.
“As a guy who grew up in the Grand Bay-Westfield area, I knew that back in the day many didn’t go over the bridge. I had been looking at another city first to get a toehold there, and it was like this epiphany, ‘no, open on the west side.’”
After doing some online polls with west side residents, asking how often they visited the bakery’s East Side location (spoiler: not many), Howe knew he was making the right move.
“We thought, ‘You know what? This is another opportunity to open another open full store on the west side.’ It’s easier for me to manage because I’m still in my hometown and not in another city driving back and forth. It made perfect sense,” says Howe.
“It’s really an opportunity to be a daily bakery for [those] folks – similar to the European-type shopping habits where you would basically go out every day and pick up what you need for the day.”
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The new West Side location will be identical to the East Side, offering all the same products and services and employing between 14 to 20 people. The only difference is that it will be much larger.
“We have a lot more room for storage and a lot more room for refrigeration and freezing, which is important in the bakery world,” says Howe. “But we do plan to offer every single product we offer out east. We will just have more space to display it and things like that.”
The plan is to have the new bakery open within eight to 12 weeks, depending on when the required custom oven arrives. The Saint John Bakery Facebook page will keep customers informed about an official opening date.
With the east Saint John location not even open a year, Howe says it’s because of the customers that he’s able to grow this quickly.
“I’m incredibly grateful to our customers,” he says. “It’s because of their support out east that we can do this.
Though he’s excited about being able to grow the business this fast, he admits he’s a little scared too, especially with summer bringing slower business.
“The opportunity feels great, but anytime you make a significant investment like this it’s also scary,” he says. “It’s important for us to continue to make things that people love so that they will support us so we can continue to do this and get our product in different parts of the city.”
Cherise Letson is the associate editor of Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
