The Little Bakery That Could Has Big Plans For Greater Bucksport Area

The folks at Sweet Cheeks Bakery on Verona Island are getting ready to celebrate their 3rd Anniversary of being in business this upcoming April 2nd.

Since purchasing the 80+-year-old building, Sweet Cheeks Bakery owner, Jonathan Beal, says he and his partner (both in life and work) Michael Roy, have been working non-stop to renovate, expand, and improve their sweet little corner of town while helping those around them to prosper as well.

"During the pandemic, I quit my job working for corporate America and invested everything that I had saved to make this happen. I was tired of the commute, and all kinds of factors were involved."

"It had been everything from a convenience store to a weighing station for deer and meat. It had been a gas station. Everything possible under the sun."

Beal says the improvements and expansions have been in phases.

"The first one was obviously getting us up and running and revamping that entire building. I mean, we had to lift the building over a foot out of the ground from where it had set for so long. We had to do the walls, the floors, the ceilings."

Phase 2 happened last year.

"We love supporting local businesses, so we went through Hill View Mini Barns and we got a prefabricated building that we could put right up next to what we already had."

"We created more workspace, table space, put in a mixer, a dishwasher, we added a walk-in freezer and a walk-in cooler in the expansion."

They also hired another couple of employees to help keep up with the demand for the delicious baked goods Beal was producing.

"The bulk of what we bake with is from recipes that were my great-grandmother's, her sister's. My great Aunt Etta, I use her pie crust. She would have been 110! A lot of old school stuff and that's what we pride ourselves on."

Beal, who is originally from the Jonesport-Beals area, says he made it through the initial year thanks to what he calls his "Downeast Deliveries"...

"Once a month we took a lot of orders from friends, family, people who started to learn about who we were, and we delivered once a month. And these were huge orders. It was lucrative, thankfully."

He says that Sweet Cheeks Bakery has now started wholesaling to a store in the Jonesport-Beals area.

Beal says he and Roy have self-funded all of the work and expansions up until this point because most lenders consider bakery start-ups as a risky investment due to the short life expectancy of a project like that, usually a few months to under a year.

When the bakery first started, it was just Jonathan, Michael, and a neighbor.

"And now we have 5 full-time people and we have 4 part-time people, all from within the community. So I'm very proud to think that we're employing people. "

"In the last 3 years, we've also created 2 scholarships because I'm all about giving back to the community that supports us."

Beal and Roy have created a thousand-dollar scholarship at Bucksport High School, and another scholarship at Beal's old Alma Mater, Jonesport Beals High School.

And they've made it a tradition, each year on the anniversary of their opening, they donate to a local non-profit or charity organization.

Last fall, they also added another little building from Hill View Mini Barns that has become the location of another mini-expansion; a pair of 24/7 fresh homemade snack vending machines.

"We call them Laverne and Shirley. Everyone has so much fun with them. I can't even tell you how happy I am with everything we've gotten from those two. In the wintertime, it's kept us going. You know, having a full-time staff, when you start losing some revenue or customers that come in because of the season, we've been able to offset that by having something open 24/7, so huge help on that end."

Beal said this latest endeavor, what he calls Phase 3, was started just after the New Year.

They've hired a crew from Downeast to help with the build.

"Everybody and their mother wants us to put in seating and to offer a dining room and that experience. And we would love nothing more than to create some sort of breakfast spot; the go-to breakfast place for people. However, in order to do so we have to have a handicap-accessible bathroom. And if you've seen our space on Verona, we're limited in so many capacities."

The price tag for such an expansion would be around $60-thousand dollars, so they won't be doing that this time around, but that will be a goal for later on down the road.

"This one is going to be a much-needed office for me. I haven't been able to sit down in three years to do payroll or work on a menu or schedule or anything. So that's happening. There will be an employee break room where we're going to have their own big bathroom with a shower, changing room, and lockers for them; any convenience anybody would need, you know? I've been schlepping home the dish rags and towels for three years and I'm thankful to be able to put in a stackable washer/dryer so we don't have to do that anymore."

"There will be a storage space for all the boxes, packaging and seasonal decorations. Everything that we don't recall have a home for. And on the first floor, that's where we have the Hill View Mini Barn, that's where we've built up and off from, we're adding more workspace because we've hired another full-time baker, in addition."

"We're hoping that it will be done by our anniversary date of April 2nd. But if not, they said they can have it done within a couple of weeks of that."

Beal gave us a preview of what the next phase for the Sweet Cheeks Bakery will be.

"If we can meet financially the bars that we've set for this year, then we can move forward with doing the same kind of expansion on the other side of the building. And the plan would be to create an event/banquet-type room that we would be able to rent out for functions, company Christmas parties or birthday parties. And being right on site, we'd be able to cater those events. And downstairs, we want to be able to create some sort of old-time breakfast diner. I envision the red stool seats and the little booths that have the radio you could turn; just a throwback to the old days."

"We're closing in on our 100-thousandth customer. I expect that to happen right around when our anniversary happens. We plan to do some sort of acknowledgment of that."

"Constantly we're doing different fundraising or donating...You know, you can't take it with you when you go. We're not trying to build a mansion on a hill and if we can make some sort of impact with what we're doing then all the better. "