A Bigger Little Loaf
If you’ve driven into New Paltz recently…
you might have noticed a beautiful, A-frame building with floor-to-ceiling windows…and our sign out front. That’s not a mirage! We’re working on our first permanent brick-and-mortar location in New Paltz, aiming to open our doors in late October or early November.
As many of you know, we've been operating out of the incubator kitchen at the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory since we launched in early 2022, selling at farmers markets and festivals, taking on a few wholesale accounts, and doing weekly retail pop-up. We’re not sure there are words to express how important PUF has been to our business. We literally would not have a business if it weren’t for the resources this space provides to start-up food businesses like ours.
However, at this point, our volume exceeds the kitchen's capacity. So, we’ve been searching for our first bakery location for about a year now—scoping out places in Poughkeepsie, Beacon, Hyde Park, and beyond.
This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in New Paltz came to us unexpectedly, thanks to a customer who had been watching us grow and who believed in our future (thank you, Stephanie!). With help from the Acceleration Project and Pursuit, we got to work on applying for an SBA* loan to build out a full-scale bakery in this space. And with the support of the building’s owner—whose vision has led to a complete transformation of this space—our dream is becoming a reality (thank you, Charlotte!). It still hasn’t sunk in!
Here’s the TL;DR: We’re looking at a late October/early November opening, and will continue to be open at PUF through November (PS, you all are going to be super stoked about the pop-up coming in after us!). We are also exploring ways to keep providing our pastries to you even after our pop-up winds down. Farmers Markets and events will continue to be a major focus for us, so you can still expect to see us at our usual hangouts.
When we open we’ll have an expanded pastry and dessert menu (we’ll finally have a cold case!), a more substantial and consistent bread line, and a more robust food menu for breakfast and lunch (in addition to our current most popular sandwiches)—especially on the weekends!
We’ll share more information as we get closer to opening, but for now, we wanted to take a little time to introduce ourselves to those who don’t know us yet.
*If you, or someone you know, has ever gone through the SBA loan application/closing process let us know if you want to start a group to process the experience. Kind of kidding but also not!
Who We Are
Little Loaf Bakeshop is a Hudson Valley-based, trans- and woman-owned bakery that aims to provide daily moments of joy and connection through creative, fun, and high-quality vegan baked goods.
We’re lucky to call the Hudson Valley home, with access to incredible local producers who make our pastries truly unique and truly exceptional—including Wild Hive for flour, Field and Larder Farm, 4Wall Farm, and Liberty Orchards for produce, Treeline Cheese for vegan cheese, Buon Pomodoro and Some Like it Hot for sauces, and more.
Right now we’re a team of nine people—about half of whom joined us within the first 6 months. We can’t overstate how important our team is. They have poured their hearts into building Little Loaf with us and have believed in us even when we’re in the throes of self-doubt. We are beyond grateful that all of them will be making the move to New Paltz with us.
And as for the name Little Loaf…while we do have some little loaves in our product lineup (brioche and croissant—with more to come) we really chose "Little Loaf" because that’s what we lovingly call our two cats, who were still kittens when we started this business. They’re now large loaves, especially Cheddar Biscuit, our orange tabby, but will always be the original little loaves! You’ll see them peppered throughout our branding in the new space.
How Little Loaf Came to Be
When we (Colleen and Rian) met in Oakland, CA, in 2019, Colleen was working at Firebrand Artisan Breads, which she helped grow from a team of 3 or 4 to a 50-person wholesale bread bakery and café. She learned the craft of baking from two key mentors, and that bakeries can be the heartbeat of a community. Rian had spent nearly as long in employer branding and employee experience in the corporate world, with prior experience in concert production and coffee.
The pandemic forced us to stop, slow down, and think about what we saw for our individual and joint futures—and what we could bring to the world to make it a little bit better. Colleen knew firsthand how good it feels—and what an honor it is—to make something that will brighten someone’s day or be shared at a major life milestone (weddings, graduations, celebrations). Rian knew firsthand how transformative a café could be just by providing folks who felt like outsiders a place to belong (employees and patrons both). So, we thought, what if we opened a bakery and cafe someday?
That vision remained in the back of our minds when life brought us to the Hudson Valley in 2020. And after a few years here, we felt the time was right. Colleen quit her part time baking job to focus entirely on starting Little Loaf, while Rian kept their 9-5, working at the markets on weekends and branding/marketing when possible. Looking back, it’s wild how everything had to unfold exactly as it did for Little Loaf to become a reality.
Our official launch was at the Beacon Farmers Market on May 15, 2022—a weekend we’ll never forget because we don’t even know how we did it. Rian had top surgery on May 13, Colleen brought them back from NYC on the 14th, baked alone all night, then ran the market with a friend on the 15th. At the time, we hadn’t even finalized our croissant recipe! Within a few weeks, however, we began getting return customers, especially for our vegan pastries.
And about that—we initially launched as a vegetarian business for personal & sustainability related reasons, and also carried a number of vegan pastries. A few months in, Lagusta’s Luscious approached us about wholesaling our vegan croissants. We were on the fence about doing wholesale, but decided to give it a try. We soon started working with other vegan businesses like Peaceful Provisions, Blackbird Infoshop, and Sweet Maresa’s, and learned more about veganism from them, our customers, and our family members along the way (shout-out to Rian’s sister Cait!). This led to a period of deep personal and professional introspection that fall and winter, and the path forward became abundantly clear. In early 2023, we transitioned to a 100% vegan bakery.
Baking with vegan ingredients became a new, fun challenge. In fact, we feel our pastries taste even better now. Without the overpowering taste of butter and eggs, other flavors shine through. This pushes us to be more creative with our products and thoughtful about our ingredients, which ultimately makes us more excited about our offerings.
It’s been an incredible two years, full of countless “pinch-me” moments as demand for our products has increased. We remember when we started getting lines at the Beacon Farmers Market and wondered if people were mistaking us for someone else. Or when we had a line at the Vegan Market in Somerville, MA, and were blown away that people even knew about us. We also have had many moments of getting misty seeing our team work together and grow.
What’s Next for Little Loaf
While we still have a lot to figure out, you can expect expanded days and hours of operation, as well as new product lines like bread, desserts and entremets, and a more robust breakfast/lunch menu.
Baking classes and workshops will start back up again (probably in 2025), including pretzels, brioche and other breads, and more. Maybe a croissant workshop too, but we need to figure out how to structure a 3-day process into a one-day class.
We’ll also be building out our catering program. Right now it’s a little loosey-goosey but once we get some new systems in place we’ll be able to offer more of our products in a much more organized way (read: we’ll be getting help managing this!).
Farmers markets and festivals will continue to be a major (and growing) part of our business. The connections we make with customers, organizers, and other business owners makes this one of the most rewarding elements of what we do—and reminds us that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. From Beacon and Poughkeepsie—the two cities that launched us—to Tarrytown, Cold Spring, Hyde Park, and beyond (lookin’ at you, New England!), we’ve been supported across the whole region. We’re excited to put down new roots in New Paltz, while simultaneously deepening our connection with these communities.
Thank You All
We can’t overstate how blown away we’ve been over the last two years by the support of our community—including customers, team members, fellow business owners, and friends and family near and far. That we’ve got to where we are is truly beyond our wildest dreams. Even in our hardest weeks, we wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
We can't wait to welcome you to our new home in New Paltz.
Thank you for believing in us.
-Rian & Colleen
